


The Demon Moon

by dynamicsymmetry



Category: Dark Tower - Stephen King, The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Zombies, Child Abuse, Crossover, F/M, Parallel Universes, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Apocalyptic Road Trip of Doom, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, cowboy knight and his shitty life, in which "crossover" has multiple meanings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-04-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 06:08:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 24
Words: 108,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3108923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dynamicsymmetry/pseuds/dynamicsymmetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Out of a world long moved on, a stranger comes to the Greene farm. He immediately earns Hershel's mistrust and the fascination of Hershel's youngest daughter - fascination which leads to disaster. Madness and death are dogging his track, with a past he can't escape and a future he can't avoid. Ahead lie strange allies and stranger lands... and in the distance, rising above it all, a Tower.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _Welcome, sai. Long days and pleasant nights._
> 
>  
> 
> A longish introduction before this thing gets started. 
> 
> I first read Stephen King's novel _The Gunslinger_ \- which I then discovered was the first of a much longer series of novels - in high school, and it was one of the first books I remember making me truly want to be a writer. I think most of us who do this because we can't not have similar moments - times when we're made to feel something so deeply and so intensely that we then desperately want to create something that makes someone else feel the same way. 
> 
> Over the last few weeks, two fortuitous things came together. First, I started writing _The Walking Dead_ fic in a much more serious way than I had before; and second, I started going back through _The Gunslinger_ and found it just as remarkable as it was the first time I stumbled on it. So this started working itself out in my head, and it won't leave me alone. 
> 
> This is both an AU and a crossover. I'm writing it in such a way that those familiar with the universe of _The Dark Tower_ will probably get slightly more out of it, but familiarity with that canon is not necessarily a prerequisite. For those who have read the _Dark Tower_ books, and care, in terms of timeline this begins roughly concurrent to the events of _The Gunslinger_ and will continue accordingly. I should note explicitly that while most of the prose here is mine, I'm borrowing certain lines both directly from the show and directly from the books - not only the specific _Dark Tower_ books but here and there from others of King's that fall somewhere into the overall mythos. 
> 
> This is also different from my other ongoing work ( _[Who Sings in the Dead of Night](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2867786/chapters/6420848)_ ) in terms of ambition and length; I don't expect that fic to be longer than your average novella, but right now this feels like a novel to me. Which means it's terrifying, because it's been almost fifteen years since I seriously attempted anything of that length in serial format. These will be longish chapters - longer than usual for me, anyway - so I'm not sure how often I'll be able to update, but I'm shooting for one chapter a week. Or so.
> 
> I have no idea if this is going to work, guys. I guess we'll find out. 
> 
> If you read all of that, and you still intend to read what follows, thankee-sai. Here we go.

 

_What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow_  
_Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,_  
_You cannot say, or guess, for you know only_  
_A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,_  
_And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,_  
_And the dry stone no sound of water. Only_  
_There is shadow under this red rock,_  
_(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),_  
_And I will show you something different from either_  
_Your shadow at morning striding behind you_  
_Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;_  
_I will show you fear in a handful of dust._

\- T.S. Eliot

 

_There are other worlds than these._

\- Jake Chambers

 

 

**Part One: Full Earth**

 

 

1

 

The gunslinger came across the fields, and Beth knew him.

Not at first. At first he was a strange man, because he was a new man - the first they had seen in the five months since the last of the townsfolk of Jael, seven miles away, had departed or died - but also because he was simply strange. He came with even deliberation, not hurrying or lingering, as if he knew the exact number of his days and could manage his time accordingly. His poncho was faded and ragged about his shoulders, his clothes in much the same condition. His hair was ragged as well, a dark fringe that hung in his eyes - narrow eyes, she saw when he drew close enough, a blue like the hard sky. His hands were rough. He looked like a rough man.

But what she saw most plainly of all was the crossbow slung on his back, and the guns at his hips. Then she knew what he was.

And yet she also knew _him_.

She stood on the porch for a moment, watching him. She knew he could see her even when he was still some way out, and she knew what he would see - a small girl still gawky with the last fades of adolescence, blond hair tied back in a tangle and tamed only by the single braid she always wore. Shawn teased her mercilessly about that, that she bothered to do it when there was no one to care but family - _and has milady selected a gown for the Spring Cotil'? Has she found a proper escort?_ \- but it gave her pleasure to do it, so she did. Her appetites and preferences were appropriately modest, but provided it was quiet and unobtrusive and did no harm, Beth made it her business to do what gave her pleasure. There was little enough to be had, since the world moved on.

It gave her pleasure to watch the gunslinger approach - for she knew him to be so. She did, for a time, until he reached her and stood in the dusty yard, looking up at her, his blue eyes squinting in the thin sun and one hand on the shoulder strap of his bow.

She gave him a single nod, which he returned. Then she left him and went in to her father.

~

It was a time before her father went out to the gunslinger. Not a long time, not awkwardly long, but longer than Beth would have expected, when it came to a strange man on their land. Her father wasn't given to violence, or even to harsh words, but theirs was one of the last farms for countless miles that still produced even a meager crop - and now, really only a crop to feed themselves, to set aside for harder times. For harder times were coming. That much was clear. And then, of course, there were the cows.

Land like that was land worth protecting, in whatever form that protection had to take. They had a shotgun. Maggie kept it cleaned and loaded.

So a stranger was worth investigation, whether to be welcomed or sent away. But her father listened in silence to her brief description of the man, then left her and went into the parlor, called Maggie and their mother to him and spoke to them, his voice low, and Beth couldn't make out his words though she listened at the door.

The youngest child of Hershel Greene, she often heard things, more than others might suspect. But not this time. And her father looked grave.

Shawn made a popping sound in her ear and tugged her hair, and she spun around, annoyed. Ordinarily he would have been grinning at her, ready to tease her into a good-natured fight, but there was no grin now. It wasn't exactly concern on his face, but he was looking past her at their father's back, at Maggie's light-lipped expression, and the afternoon light streaming in through the dusty windowpanes caught his face at such an angle that he looked older. Just for a moment, the man he might become, given the time to be so. Worn with concern and care, perhaps older than a young man should be.

"There's a man," she said quietly, in response to his unanswered question. She jerked her head at the front door and the porch beyond. "There. By the porch."

"Who?"

"A man. I don't know him." She shrugged, and as she did there came again the quiet knowledge that she _did_ , a little. Somehow. As if from a dream, now long-past, that she couldn't quite recall.

Sometimes she had such dreams. Echoes of waking, echoes that sounded into the future and now and then turned into true happenings.

"Well, what _is_ he?" Shawn sounded impatient now, and again he cast a glance at their father, who was still talking - low and rapid. "Peddler? Manni-folk? Does he bear a sack? What does he want?"

"I don't _know._ " So she didn't, but for one thing, and something kept the word _gunslinger_ locked behind her lips. Perhaps a desire to not be teased, for gunslingers were as mythical as the Man Jesus himself often seemed to be - but that wasn't all of it. She sighed and pushed past him, moving back toward the door. She sensed it might not be advisable to go out to a stranger, to question him, but all at once the urge was there and she wasn't thinking - which she would be chided for. She already knew.

But each day here was much the same. Plant, reap. Water the horses and cows, tend the hens. Pray for rain, listen at night to her father speak the words of the Man Jesus. Her world was small, and the world outside was moving on. The gunslinger was a piece of that world, come... perhaps not for a good purpose. She couldn't say. But a mystery was a mystery.

And she _knew_ him.

"Shawn." Her father, brusque. "Come in here. I'd speak with you."

He went, and left her alone.

It wasn't unusual, but it still rankled - at seventeen she was old enough to take offense when treated like a child and left out of things, yet it happened more often than not. She suspected the reasons for it: that her father was protective in part because of what the world was becoming and had become, that he wanted to guard her for as long as he could - her more than the others, and she didn't wonder at that - but she was also old enough to know it was foolish. The world would find her, one way or another.

So rebellion rose in her and she went to the door.

"Beth." She was reaching for the handle when her father's hand fell on her shoulder - heavy, firm. More so than usual. "I'll speak with him. Keep yourself to yourself."

Not unexpected, though she tensed with fresh annoyance, and glanced back at Maggie and her mother, who were looking at them with brows drawn together in worried frowns. Worry. Everywhere, worry. Shawn might have questions, but her father had asked none. Now there was only silence.

She looked up at her father again, and the smile he gave her was so small as to be nearly invisible, though it wasn't stern. "All's well," he said quietly, and opened the door, moving past her and out onto the porch.

She followed him, silent. He hadn't specifically told her not to.

Shawn was behind her, just as silent. They hung back in the doorway - Beth tried to step forward but he caught hold of her arm, and though ordinarily she would have tugged it free, some instinct stilled her. Pulled all her attention forward to where her father stood at the top of the steps and looked down into the yard.

The gunslinger was still there. He didn't appear to have moved. He looked up at her father with that same narrow squint, his face unreadable, his hand on the strap of his bow. Then his gaze flicked past her father and found her, held hers for a moment, and something she couldn't define pricked her like the poke of a carelessly handled needle.

For a moment no one spoke. Then the gunslinger inclined his head and spat into the dust of the yard.

"Life for your crop," he said. It might have been taken as mockery, given that he was standing on dry packed earth rather than in rows of corn, but there was no mockery in his voice or on his face. He simply stood, steady and unmoving, as if waiting to see what her father would do.

Her father squared his shoulders but otherwise remained as motionless as the gunslinger. "Life for your own," he said, his voice carefully neutral, and the gunslinger gave him the same little nod he had given her.

"Long days and pleasant nights."

"May you have twice the number."

The cadence and rhythm of the old greetings settled over everything, smoothed out edges. Everyone seemed to relax the slightest bit - except the gunslinger, who, as far as Beth had been able to tell, had never really been tense. He had only been waiting.

"What's your business here?"

"I come through Jael," said the gunslinger. He nodded over his shoulder. "Lookin' for a bed, but-"

"Jael is dead. You missed her by about five months."

"Yar. Could tell." He paused, and he was clearly gauging something. Feeling something out. Beth got the sense of a careful man, calculating, always reading the landscape. Not a fool. A fool wouldn't wear those guns.

She knew a little of the world, yes.

"I'll work for bed and meat," the gunslinger went on. "Two or three nights. Then I move on. I'll give no trouble." His accent wasn't altogether unfamiliar; it was a bit like her own, but there was a harder bent to it, a thinness in the vowels, distinctly audible though he spoke quick and low. From the sound of it he had perhaps come from the south, over the hardpan and the dry forested hills beyond. Not long ago she had heard a peddler woman speak like that, an emaciated thing with one ear gone and a long, twisted scar on her cheek, carrying jars of some clear liquid and laughing too hard at her own jokes. Maggie had seen her courteously but firmly off the land with the shotgun.

This man had the look of one who laughed rarely. If at all.

Her father didn't immediately answer. From behind her, Shawn let out a soft breath, and when Beth glanced over her shoulder she saw Maggie standing in the hall and holding the gun by her side, her dark hair pushed back and her eyes bright and keen. Not ready to shoot. But ready to be ready to do so.

"And where might you be bound?" Her father cocked his head, his arms crossed over his chest - not a yes, though also not a no. "Tell me that, do it please ya."

The gunslinger shook his head once, slow. "Nowhere."

"You don't have the look of a man going _nowhere._ Looks like you've been on the move a goodish time."

"Like the world," replied the gunslinger, "as she turns." And though he still did not smile, Beth thought she could detect the smallest trace of humor in his voice, like waters running deep underground. Though this humor was dry. "You've seen men move for movin's sake."

"I have." Her father was silent again, head still cocked as if listening to something only he could hear. But for the shake of his head, the gunslinger had remained motionless as a standing stone, but now he moved almost imperceptibly. His right hand didn't leave the bow's strap, but his left pushed the edge of the poncho a little further back from his hip, and the sun caught the barrel of the gun there and brought out a dull gleam.

It might have been a threat. But it didn't feel like one.

"You'll work, you say. Draw water? Walk the rows and do as I bid ya? Pitch hay? Can you tend to cattle?"

The gunslinger started. It was tiny, a shift of the shoulders, but Beth saw it, and was unsurprised by it. What was more surprising was that her father had mentioned the cattle at all.

"You keep cows?"

"Threaded stock." Her father paused, and while Beth couldn't see his eyes she could hear the steel in his voice. "We've no qualms about killing a man over them."

The gunslinger nodded. "Yar. Can do all those things."

"You a farming man?"

Again that amusement, and this time accompanied by a smile thin as a knife's blade. "No."

"Beth." Maggie's hiss, just at her shoulder, and she felt Shawn back away. Maggie didn't touch her, but the word was insistent. "Come away." But Beth didn't move, and her sister didn't tug at her.

"One day, two nights," her father said. "Day after tomorrow at dawn you'll be gone."

Another nod from the man, slight but clearly his version of a bow. He released the strap of the crossbow, and something in the air lightened and passed over. Beth didn't think she had almost witnessed a confrontation, but perhaps, for a moment or two, it had been treading into that territory. Behind her, Maggie let out a quiet breath.

"You have an animal?"

Another shake of the head. Nothing more. Only that narrow, clear blue gaze from under the shadow of his dark hair. Beth thought of a hawk - a creature she had only seen once when she was ten - wheeling overhead on the thermals.

"There's a well other side of the yard. Take your rest. I'll send out some food." Her father fell silent as if the conversation was over, but didn't turn away. "Your name. I'd have it, if you stay."

For a moment the gunslinger didn't answer, and Beth wondered if he would. Names were simple things, but they were also powerful things, and while people who didn't know better might toss them about, wiser folk kept them close.

But again came that small, respectful nod. "Daryl. Dixon."

"I'm Hershel. Hershel Greene." At last her father turned back toward the door, and Beth had no words for the look on his face. She had never seen that look before - as if he had perceived the coming of a storm, a drought, and a fire all at once - or, rather, as if he had perceived the ghosts of the same. Echoes of it far more intense than mere memory.

He herded her and Shawn back inside, but looked one last time over his shoulder, and the set of his jaw was hard.

"Don't come near the house."

~

"But is he _dangerous?_ " Beth's mother was leaning back against the kitchen counter, her hands clasped in front of her. They were dry-washing each other, rubbing over and over, until Beth wondered if she might make them raw.

Her father was looking out the window, perhaps at the gunslinger - at _Daryl;_ she turned the name over in her mind - but perhaps not. Perhaps merely looking. There was a vagueness in his eyes that indicated deep thought.

"Not in the way you mean," he said slowly. "He won't harm us. He doesn't intend to."

Maggie looked up. She was sitting by the table and shucking corn, her fingers moving with the same nervous rapidity that seemed to have taken her mother's hands - pulling the husks free in hard little jerks, nimbly tugging away the silk, dropping both in the pail in front of her. "You can't know that. How can you know that?"

"I know it." He didn't turn, but from her place by the door Beth could see his expression sharpen. "Trust me, I bid you. I'll speak on it more if speaking is needed."

But he wouldn't let the man near the house. Certainly not _into_ the house. For a moment Beth considered going against his request, asking why he was treating Daryl as he would someone dangerous - if indeed he wasn't so. But she bit it back, and she also bit back that other word - _gunslinger._ Because her father had seen the guns; she knew it. He had seen them very well. And he would know what they meant. The others, perhaps not. They all knew of the Man Jesus and his book, and at times their mother read to them in the evenings from some of her father's other books - bound in ancient leather and some so worn that to open them at all was to risk ruining them - but so far as she knew, neither her sister nor her brother nor even her mother had made much study of them.

But she had. Some in secret and some not. And she knew things. Old things.

Did her father know that she knew them?

She went out into the hall and stood for a moment, thinking. Shawn was gone, out in the barn doing the milking. The kitchen had fallen silent but for the soft tearing sounds of the husking. The house felt unnaturally still, and again Beth thought of a storm.

She could turn. Open the front door. Perhaps not go out but stand there, see what she could see. Look to the horizon, perhaps. Look for clouds there. Look for rain. Rare now - but then so were strangers.

But at last she turned away from the door and went up the stairs to her room.

Like all the rooms in the house - but for the parlor, which boasted a sofa upholstered in a faded floral pattern and real crystal lamps - it was spare and plain, and hers was small, as suited the youngest child of a man who had never been wealthy. There was no rug and there were no curtains, merely pitted wood and a narrow bed, a dresser by a window through which the light shone thin and pale. Getting on to evening. She lingered by the window for a moment, but the porch roof blocked a good view of the yard, and she could see no one.

What would he do? Work, if he followed through on his promise, but what else?

She didn't believe what he said about heading nowhere. She didn't believe that for a moment. She couldn't have said why, but the feeling of it was bright and warm in her, an intuition that was pleasurable in its certainty. There was purpose behind him, driving him, and he was hiding it. Not for any sinister reason - she felt that as well - but he did have one.

There might be great deal he would hide.

And she _knew_ him.

She bent to the dresser, opened a drawer and withdrew a small book of her own, not nearly as worn or as venerable as those of her father. But it was precious to her. In it, she kept her life.

She took out a stubby stick of lead, sat down on her bed and began to write.

~

Daryl Dixon remained where he was for some time after Hershel went inside.

He was thinking, which he often did, surrounded by a kind of stillness he wove for himself out of the very air. It was a skill he had discovered early in his life, and many times it worked to his advantage, and more than once it had saved him in spirit and in body. He wove it now and considered the fields, the house, the nearby barn, and his place in the context of all of those things.

Hershel, such a man. Not a bad man, he thought, but potentially a formidable one, and someone best not crossed. Which was fine; he wasn't interested in crossing anyone. He had meant what he said - a day and two nights and he would move on. Whenever possible, Daryl avoided lies. He was not good at them, and in the long run it saved a great deal of trouble.

The family - what he had seen, what he guessed. A son. An older daughter - far back, in the shadows, but he had seen her all the same, marked her in the way he marked anything that moved. And the younger daughter, standing in front. Unafraid, and her lack of size and obvious strength and the round youth of her face made her lack of fear all the more noteworthy. She had seen him first, and even then she had seemed both unafraid...

And unsurprised.

He mulled on that for a few moments more. Then he turned and walked to the tree that stood by the wooden fence marking the boundary between yard and field, sat down beneath its shade and laid down his bow and his gunna.

He carried little. Water, jerky, a bundle of dry leaves which, when dissolved in water, made a tea that soothed the mind and the body if either or both needed soothing. A battered tin cup. A bandanna. And oil, rag, brush - bullets. Perhaps the most precious things of any he carried, besides the bow.

He spread out the bandanna and arranged these last things on it, unholstered his guns, and began to take them apart.

Cleaning them was a meditative act, a ritual he knew well enough to perform without any conscious thought. Movements of the hands, the fingers - not the eyes, for the eyes were unreliable, even when one learned to swear by what they could do. Long-learned and long-remembered, drilled into him before he was capable of truly understanding why, accompanied by hard cuffs to the head if he forgot a step or faltered. He had always learned by blows.

They were his father's guns. He had carried them for nearly twenty years. In those years he had only used them once.

He lost the time. The sun crept downward. Movement high in the periphery of his vision; in a fraction of a fraction of a second the world snapped back into sharp focus, but it was only Hershel coming toward him, bearing a bundle and a cup in his hands.

Daryl laid down the gun and stood. Waited.

"Chicken," Hershel said when he reached him, holding out the clothed-wrapped bundle and the cup together. "We also got you a biscuit. And there's water." His words were clipped but not unfriendly, and Daryl took both things with a nod.

"Thankee-sai."

Hershel's eyes narrowed, but he said nothing to that. Daryl thought he might be able to guess why. It wasn't the first time he had earned that reaction with those words, that speech. Yet he said them. Not saying them was, for reasons he didn't quite understand, simply not an option.

"You come over the hardpan?"

Daryl nodded again. He made no move to sit. Now was the time to gauge the man, to know who he was through his speech, the way of his body. "The hills."

"Long time since we saw anyone from out that way."

Daryl gave half a shrug. There didn't seem to be much to say to that.

"Hard times there?"

"Yar." A hard little smile. "Everywhere."

"The world has moved on."

"They say that." Daryl looked past him, once again at the house and the barn and the fields beyond. The tree beneath which he stood was not exactly green, but it was also clearly not dead, its leaves still soft and outspread. Corn grew in the rows - tough but alive. And there were cattle. Threaded stock had been the claim. He wasn't sure he believed that, but Hershel also didn't seem like a man inclined to lie. "But you do alright, looks like."

"Well enough. We eat, we have water. A solid roof and walls to match. More than most can say." Just the hint of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "We follow the Man Jesus. We're accordingly blessed." He paused for a few seconds, then continued before Daryl had a chance to reply to that - which, tactfully, he hadn't intended to do. "I know you. What you are. Others may have an inkling, have the memory of memories, but I _know."_

He leaned forward, and though he was calm there was no softness in his voice or in his face. "Whatever you seek... Whatever your quest... You'll not find it here. No way to it, no path. You'll do as you said. You'll stay, take your rest, and then you'll go."

"Meant what I said." Ordinarily Daryl might have been offended, might have shot back, but that seemed intensely inadvisable now, and whatever his other failings might be, he wasn't a fool. But his tone took on the sardonic edge it often did, and he didn't try to hold it back. "Cry your pardon if you thought otherwise."

Hershel didn't reply. He also didn't go, and Daryl felt a prickle of annoyance, one that might become something else if he wasn't careful. Careful he could be, when it was needed, but when it wasn't... Then, careful wasn't a word that had any place in him but his aim, and there were times when that part of him rose up and overwhelmed everything else.

Once it had been much, much worse. But the world had begun to move on long before even that time, and hard travel had a way of tempering.

"You'll sleep in the barn," Hershel said finally. "If it suits you."

He turned and went back to the house, his strides solid and taken straightly, a man who knew his authority and was confident in it. Daryl watched him, bemused, then sat down and began to eat.

~

The moon was high, and it streamed in through every window it touched, turning cloth to grave rags and wood to bone. Curled in her bed, Beth dreamed.

They were running, he and she together, and she knew him. She knew him, his face and his voice, his hands when they took hold of her and dragged her with him. There was a stench all around them, rank and horrible, and she recognized it as decaying flesh, though worse than any she had ever smelled. Her lungs were burning, her muscles screaming agony - she couldn't run anymore, she _couldn't,_ but he cried her name and she found the running deep inside her.

All was a blur of fear and pain, but she was aware enough of what was around her to be awed by it - tall trees, grass, shrubs, so green and so lush. She had never seen anything like it, never even _dreamed_ it. There were the gardens in her father's good book, and she knew the word _forest,_ but it was nothing like this. Nothing at all. It was beautiful.

But it was a lie. This was not a good world.

This world was moving on.

So was she. So were they. She saw him turn and bring up the bow, and his aim was true - a gunslinger's aim even if he carried no gun - and he sent down one rotting, shambling thing and then another, bent to snatch up the bolts and shoved her on. They tore through high grass which scratched at her arms, her back; the small stings were nothing to the awful weariness that wrenched at her entire body.

And they fell.

He dropped and without needing him to bid her follow she did as well, sprawling beside him, gasping. Each breath was torture but she took them anyway, heaving, her stomach twisting into nausea. But now, lying beside him and listening to his own rough breathing, she realized that she was no longer afraid. It was as if she had left it behind as she fled.

She looked up and the sky came into focus. Far above, birds were circling, and she watched them turn and turn.

 _Ka is a wheel,_ she thought, and did not understand.

But she felt a weight at her hip, a strange pressure, and though she couldn't lift her head, she managed to move her hand. She traced what was there with half-numb fingers, made it a picture in her mind - and could no longer breathe at all.

Slung against her hip was a gun.

~

Daryl stared into the fire.

It was a small fire, and because it did not suit him to sleep in the barn it was built under the same tree where he had cleaned his guns and taken his meal. The smoke rose up through the branches and lingered there in the light of the moon like ghosts. He felt it over him, each wisp, like the Ladies o' the Hills who danced in the light of the Kissing Moon and lured the unsuspecting to their deaths in swamps and deep ravines. As a boy he had believed in such things. Ghosts and demons, magicians and wicked kings.

Then he became a man, and found them to be truths.

He reached into his gunna sack and pulled out a cigarette - one of his last three - and lit it on a bit of tinder. He tossed the tinder back into the fire, which sent up a brief burst of sparks.

The fire was a constant. The darkness erased all difference in the landscape from night to night, became a black sameness that he found more comforting than alarming. In that blackness anything might lurk, but the fire was its own magic, and the fire kept them clear. Long before Jael, crossing the hardpan, he had passed through another dead town - not dead from the passing of hard years but from sudden massacre. He had seen the bodies, had walked among them in silence, and marked each one where it lay. For a time he stood, looking down at them and at the evidence of what killed them.

Bullets. Many. Well shot, well placed. It sent something cold through him, which sank into his belly like a fist of ice. He had turned then, left the town to its rising ghosts and made camp some distance away, but even with the distance he had been unable to escape the feeling that he kept vigil for the dead.

The dead, killed by inhuman skill. Skill he never expected to see, not in this world that had moved so far on.

He had murmured to the fire, and he murmured now - words beaten into him as hard and as surely as the ritual of the cleaning of guns. He hated them, and could not free himself of them. He carried them like his own corpse slung over his back with his bow.

_I do not aim with my hand. He who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father._

_I aim with my eye._

He took a long drag on the cigarette and sent its smoke up to join the other ghosts. Better not to say more. The words were a talisman and a ritual both, and as such they were also a summons. He was surrounded now by the imagining of ghosts, but he could call up real ones if he wished. If he was so foolish.

Things were falling apart. The center was not holding. But he would not seek that center. Whatever Hershel had believed he was here for, whatever the man thought he was after... He was wrong. No quest. Not for him. Quests were for gunslingers, for the true descendents of Arthur Eld, the bearers of light and civilization, the servants of the White. And what was he?

"Nobody," he whispered, and flicked ash into the fire. "Nothin'."

So he would stay and he would go again, and with the world he would move on.

He finished smoking, waiting until the fire had burned down to coals, and lay beside it, looking up at the moon through the gently stirring leaves. The smoke was gone and the air was clear. The sky was the color of spilled ink, but near the moon it lightened, became a pale halo. It was not comforting, but he watched it as sleep crept over him, unable to look away.

A thought came to him, unbidden and strange, the last thing in his mind before he fell away from waking. The girl on the porch, the way she had looked at him. That straight lack of fear, the directness of her gaze. Of them all - that he had been able to see - she was the only one who looked at him like that. And it wasn't only that she wasn't afraid, and it wasn't only that she was unsurprised.

She had looked at him as if she knew him.

 _And I know her,_ he thought, slipping into the dark. _I know her very well._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...So yeah, this is coming a little faster than I thought. I wouldn't expect this pace to continue, as my professional writing workload is about to get heavy, but I'm enjoying it while it lasts. 
> 
> To everyone who's been reading this weird little project, I say thankee-sai. There appear to be more of you than I expected, which was essentially none. Leave a comment, if you're inclined and do it please ya, and tell me if I'm getting this half right so far.

 

2

 

“You’re a gunslinger.”

Water spattered around the stone edge of the well as Daryl jerked his head up, and Beth nearly had to stifle a laugh. Because it was funny, seeing a man who must be in a nearly constant state of keen awareness taken so by surprise – but also out of a thin thread of nervousness, because when he looked at her, wet hair hanging in his face, she caught what might have been alarm flicker across his angular features.

He was bent over the well and stripped to the waist, a bucket on the ground beside him and the dipper raised to spill over his head and shoulders – which he had just done when she spoke to him. Now he dropped the dipper into the bucket, straightened up and turned to her, pushing his hair back from his brow. She wanted to say something else but it was then that she really looked at him, and the words died in her throat.

She knew he was strong. She had seen it in him immediately, in his stance and his bearing, despite the poncho he had worn. But now she _saw_ it – muscle corded tightly over bone, all lean and desert-parched. He looked as if the water had been walked out of him. And he was covered with scars, deep and long and twisting over his skin – and especially over his back. She had seen those when he was still bent over, but only now did she realize she had done so.

She would not have called him a beautiful man. There was nothing soft about him. But his body caught her gaze and held it strangely.

He shook his head. But she persisted.

“You _are_. You have the guns.”

He shook his head again, and now she saw impatience. She knew it would be wiser to go; she wasn’t supposed to be out here at all, clutching her pail of chicken feed, and she would get holy hell for it if she were caught. But she didn’t go. Even if she tried she doubted her feet would obey her.

“I know what they mean. I read it in Daddy’s books. You wouldn’t carry them if you weren’t one.”

He huffed a thin laugh. “You that sure?” He bent for his shirt – he must have washed it earlier, for it looked a bit cleaner than it had the day before – and rubbed it rapidly over his hair. “Maybe I killed one, took ‘em off him.”

“You couldn’t,” Beth said softly, and once more he paused in the middle of what he was doing and looked at her. “Not if you weren’t one yourself. I know that too.”

“You know a lot, huh?” He laid the shirt on the edge of the well to dry, crouched by the bucket and filled the dipper with water. “Ain’t no more gunslingers.”

“Not since the world moved on?” She said it in a sing-song tone, mocking; she was impatient with the phrase, if the truth were known. It might be true, but it struck her as an excuse for all manner of things. “You’re a bad liar, Daryl Dixon.”

Yet it wasn’t a lie. Not quite. It was less than he knew, but it was far more than deception.

He grunted and tipped the dipper against his lips, apparently uninclined to continue the conversation. Out of a perverse stubbornness, Beth set down the pail and crouched as well. The pail was heavy, and even only an hour after dawn the day was already getting warm. They were in the last weeks of Full Earth with Reaping to come, but it would still be some time before the hot days truly abated.

“I knew it when I saw you,” she said, her voice low, as if she was afraid she might be overheard, though there was no one about to do the hearing. The words were rushing out of her, flooding as if in a sudden downpour, and it was _him,_ something about _him,_ that drew them forth. “Everything about you. I know you look at me and you think you know what you see, but you don’t know, and you don’t see. Even here, they think I don’t know and I don’t see, and that’s why I do. I _don’t_ know why you’d deny it, and I _don’t_ know why you’ve come, but you _are_ a gunslinger.”

This time when he dropped the dipper he did so with a clatter, practically throwing it down, and his expression took on a mean edge that should perhaps have frightened her – and did not. “You don’t know _nothin’_.”

It stung. There was nothing particularly hurtful about the words themselves – they were merely more denial, no open insult or abuse in them, but the tone lashed against her ears, and not for the first time she felt a pang of deep familiarity that in its turn deepened the hurt.

_He’s spoken this way before. To me. To me._

_Or he will._

“You can say that.” She rose and took up the pail, her head tipped high and her shoulders straight. Standing like this she loomed over him and it pushed steel into her spine. He might hurt her but she wouldn’t let it show. “You can say it all you want. Tomorrow you’ll be gone and it won’t matter anymore.”

She turned and began to walk toward the barn, head still up and her eyes forward – and she blinked back the tears that burned in their corners, and didn’t know why they were there. It wasn’t just the hurt. She looked at him and felt an ache that was so oddly like grief. There was loss between them. It hung in the air like the smell of burning husks.

So she stopped and glanced back at him, and saw that he was where she had left him, staring after her, and with all her words she couldn’t have described the look on his face except that he might feel some of what she did. He might.

“You can say it,” she repeated, “but you’ll still be a gunslinger.”

She left him and went to feed the chickens.

~

She shouldn’t have been able to surprise him.

For some long minutes Daryl looked at the dipper as if it might tell him something. As if it could explain why his mind had drifted enough that he had missed her approach – or why her movements had been so silent that he hadn’t been able to hear her at all. In years no one had been able to take him unaware. But now here was a farm girl who had done so with apparent ease.

It was worrisome. Regardless of how it happened. Once, had he allowed such a thing, he might have been beaten until he bled. Beaten and made to say his contrition, kneeling in the dirt and the thorns and feeling black hatred burning in his gut. Hatred strong enough to kill.

_I grieve. I have forgotten the face of my father, whose guns I hope someday to bear._

And hadn’t that become Ka’s cruel joke. For the guns were at his hips, and though they were always a weight on him, now they weighed heavier.

_Get up, you little shit. Get up and face what comes to you like some semblance of a man._

Hershel would doubtless come to him soon and tell him what was expected of him in the way of labor. He looked at the shirt for a moment and then pulled it on, in spite of its dampness. She had seen him that way as well, exposed with his scars bare in the sun, and while he shouldn’t care what she thought of them, he found he did. He should have been beyond shame. Twenty years should have dried it out of him, left him hanging like cuts of meat. But he felt it, with her.

This was entirely new.

He returned to the tree and his gunna. He had filled his canteen, and in truth if he wished to leave he believed he could do so. He had traveled hard over the desert before he came to the softer land in which the Greene farm sat, a stretch of lower fields and copses of scrubby trees where the rain seemed to come a little more often and a little more generously. He had come on foot without the aid of a horse or even a pack mule, which was how he had traveled for over three years. Yesterday he had been tired – far more than he had allowed himself to show – and had believed he would truly need more than a day to recover, but now he thought he might go on.

There were things here that worried him, more than only the daughter. The obvious relative health of Hershel’s crop, high and ready for Reaping. The good repair of the house and the barn. The claim of threaded stock; so rare, though he hadn’t yet confirmed it himself and wanted to quite badly. Beasts with bloodlines untainted by poison, beasts without stunted extra legs and three or four additional blind, rolling eyes. The chicken, with which Hershel had been free and which tasted as clean as the cattle supposedly were. Perhaps he didn’t consider his farm especially remarkable, but though Hershel seemed to know a considerable amount – more than a simple farmer should – Daryl wasn’t certain when the man had last traveled far off his own land. He would likely have little reason to go further than Jael, which was dead and had been for some time.

The farm was doing well. Extraordinarily well.

It felt like a trap.

He crouched by his crossbow, ran his hand along the graceful curve of its limb. Compared to the guns it was a young weapon, without venerability or pedigree, but in its way it was as great as the guns, and more faithful. The guns he merely carried, and they were a burden.

But he loved the bow. And it loved him.

“Should go,” he murmured. In the desert, over the course of weeks upon weeks completely alone, he had acquired the habit of holding palaver with himself and with people who were not, strictly speaking, present – or even necessarily alive. By now he did so unconsciously. “Really fuckin’ should.”

But he knew he wouldn’t. Ka had brought him here. Ka would keep him until he was released.

_Ka is a wheel, its one purpose to turn._

And it had been driving him through the world for a very long time.

He loved his bow. He trusted it with his life. But now, deep in the part of himself he trusted even more, he was sure he couldn’t depend on it to protect him from what was coming.

What was here.

He closed his eyes, and Ka sent him spinning back.

~

Merle found him in the clearing and let out a long, low whistle. Daryl didn’t turn. As he had been taught – as he had been taught until it was deep nature, not second but first in his core with his breath and the beat of his heart – he was already aware of his elder brother’s approach when Merle was still no less than forty yards from him, though Merle had taken care to hide the sounds of his movement. It was a difficult thing in these woods, the trees low and dry and forever dropping twigs and leaves that cracked and rustled maddeningly. But they could both move quietly now, and they could both listen, and hear very well.

And they could look, and see.

He was tracking a deer. He had been for some hours, the crossbow level in his hands, unwavering despite the weariness that was creeping up on him. These were his hours, very few between days of chores and instruction; they were precious to him, and he used them as well as he could. The work he minded less and in truth there wasn’t much of it, but these were hours when he could escape from the furious drunkenness of his father, the weight of his fists, and the things he seemed desperately – incomprehensibly – to need to teach his sons.

But now here was Merle, and though Merle wasn’t always bad company, more and more Daryl found himself uncomfortable with it. Merle was changing, and Daryl disliked the manner and direction of the change. He was older than Daryl by several years and as such had always been harder, more worn – his growth early _influenced_ by their father’s rage. But there had still been something in him not formed and shaped by that rage, and Daryl had curled toward it like a plant seeking light – or not light but shelter from a constant storm. After their mother burned in her sleep, Merle was the only shelter he had.

But more and more, every day, Merle was reminding him distinctly of the thing from which Merle had sheltered him.

“Getting’ far off, little brother.” In the periphery of his vision Daryl saw him look to the sky, meditatively eying the position of the sun, which was slipping dangerously close to the hills. “Better turn back, you wanna be at the house ‘fore dark. Avoid yourself a hidin’.”

“Yar, you too.” He moved slowly through the clearing, eyes now firmly to the ground. The spoor was getting fresher – scattered leaves and scat still moist – and there was decreasing room in his mind for anything else. “You’re out here same as me.”

“Out here watchin’ your scrawny ass, brother.” Merle moved up beside him and bent to see what caught his attention. “Gotta be at least another hour or so aheada ya. Not worth it, man.”

“More like half. Less.” Daryl steeled himself and continued, pushing past the edge of the clearing and back in among the trees. The bow in his hands was comforting, grounding, far more than the guns he had only recently been allowed to use. He was sixteen, still not possessed of a man’s frame, and the bow was oversized for him – almost comically so – but he had learned it and how to make it fit with his body in ways he believed he would never know the guns. And didn’t care to.

His father hated the bow, threatened to break it at least every other day, and that bizarre hatred made Daryl love it all the more. What his father hated must be good. Must be worth treasuring. Especially when it was something he was coming to use with such skill. That was why, perhaps: his skill was meant to be confined to the use of the guns, aim and shoot and kill, and to see it used elsewhere – to watch such skill flourishing – was an insult the depths of which Daryl knew he could not fully understand.

Their father’s rage was rooted in some ancient and deeply felt loss – that much he _did_ understand, though it had never been spoken of aloud. Their father had been stripped of something, had it torn away from him like a limb. This was an attempt at binding up the wound, retaining some memory of use and purpose.

He felt no pity for that. If he remained under his father’s instruction, soon he might have no pity for anyone at all.

That, he also understood.

_Pity is not a thing for gunslingers. It’s for milksops and old women. To be a gunslinger is to be beyond pity, beyond mercy. An eye, a mind, a heart made for killing cannot admit it and still aim true._

“Why you followin’ it anyway? What’re you gonna prove?” He was beginning to wish very badly that Merle would shut up, go away, because among other things he would scare off the game. Which was probably Merle’s intention. “Got meat enough, from somethin’ with the normal number of eyes even. C’mon back and let it be.”

“Ain’t about provin’.” He couldn’t say what it was about. Didn’t want to. Merle would, he thought, not be sympathetic, whatever his feelings. _Find your balls, brother. Hold ‘em in your hands if you have to and deal with what he dishes out. You run from him, he’ll just catch you and make sure you never run again._ “I come this far.”

“Come this far’n no further.” And now there was an edge of something under Merle’s contempt, and it caught and held Daryl’s attention in a way nothing else his brother had said had done. He almost stopped. Almost. “Just give it up, you stupid little—”

Daryl turned on him, the bow still lifted, and for a fraction of an instant a thought came to him – of letting the bolt fly straight into his brother’s chest. He suppressed a shudder; Merle would see it and use it against him. “Back _off,_ you fuckin’—”

A crack behind them. A rustle, the groundcover shifting. As one they fell silent, and as one they looked and saw.

The deer. Small, standing in a shaft of pale sun, and staring at them out of four bulbous eyes.

The eyes had developed in such a way that they appeared half faceted, their surfaces broken and divided. Perhaps it could see out of them and perhaps not, but it had survived to this point, so probably it could. Its hide was patchy, the skin beneath raw and awful, and two additional legs dangled from its abdomen, withered and useless. It was a deer-insect, Daryl thought as he looked at it. A deer-bug. He had seen muties before, and this wasn’t even the worst – he had seen things so twisted and so horrible that they had been killed at birth and their corpses burned. But this was somehow still beyond anything else he had encountered.

Seeing it like this, he realized that he had assumed it would be good. That it _was_ worth it. And it wasn’t.

It was unmoving, though it looked directly toward them. He could probably kill it anyway now, one clear shot to the brain, and it might be an act of mercy. Such a thing shouldn’t live. Shouldn’t breed, assuming it hadn’t already done so. But his finger was stilled on the trigger.

_Pity is not a thing for gunslingers._

Pain lanced through him.

Another moment, and the thing shambled away through the trees, its gait grotesquely uneven and its abdominal limbs swaying as it went.

“Toldja,” Merle murmured. He sounded sad. “Toldja.”

They did indeed return after dark. Their father was waiting outside the shack, his arms crossed, and Daryl knew what was coming.

“Trackin’ a deer,” he said before the shouting could begin. More likely than not it would do no good, but honesty was nearly always better than dishonesty. Very early he discovered that he couldn’t lie to save his own skin, and perhaps the fact that he had been making use of a properly learned skill would work to some small advantage. “Found it, but I—”

His father’s fist crashed into the side of his jaw and he went down with sparks bursting in his eyes.

Distantly, he heard Merle draw in a breath.

“Little shit,” his father said – almost calmly – and sent the toe of his boot into Daryl’s stomach. Nausea rocked through him and for a moment he was certain he would puke. “Wastin’ the whole afternoon. Got chores need doin’. What about evenin’ lessons? Oughta fuckin’ skin you, make decent curtains.” He kicked again and then again, and Daryl did puke in a burning rush, unable to get his head out of the way of where it fell, and it spattered his cheek and mouth. The world was made of agony, white-hot in his belly and his chest and wrenching down to his crotch, and he wondered if his organs were rupturing. If he might actually die here, lying in the dust and in his own vomit, and somehow that would be an appropriate end.

But his father was skilled in the way of violence and would know just how much to mete out without destroying what he hurt.

At least without destroying it in body.

A hand like a steel claw gripped his arm and dragged him up to his knees. He felt the pop of dislocation and couldn’t hold back his scream, which earned him another blow across the face. Blood from his nose rushed into his open mouth to join the taste of the vomit, tears scorching tracks down his cheeks, and he no longer felt human. He was a thing.

He was a thing like the deer. Obscene and misshapen. Not meant to be. Whatever his father wanted, whatever he expected, Daryl would never be that, never, and would be punished for it until he died of it.

“Say your contrition,” his father said, still so horribly calm. “Say it, you wretched little filth.”

He had to. He had to or it would just go on and on until the blessing of unconsciousness. He dragged in a huge, shuddering breath that made his ribs moan and sob, and found the words where they had been carved into his mind.

“I… grieve,” he rasped. “I have… forgotten the face… of my father… whose guns I hope someday to bear.”

“Goddamn right,” his father murmured. “Goddamn right. And you will, you will yet, if I have to break every last bone in your worthless little body.”

Something happened, then. Something cold and hard as the Demon Moon that even now rose over the trees. Daryl felt his mind curve into a blade, into the beautiful limb of his beautiful bow, and he knew.

_I do not kill with my gun. He who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father._

_I kill with my heart._

“I’ll remember,” he whispered. “I’ll remember very well.”

In that moment he knew he was going to kill his father.

~

“Saw you out in the yard with him.”

Beth looked up a little sharply, but there was a faint smile in Maggie’s voice. They were standing at the kitchen counter shelling beans, and her mind had been wandering – to the yard and to Daryl, if she was fully honest, but also beyond, to the hardpan and the hills from which Daryl had supposedly come. To things she had never seen, and before had never wanted to, not enough to allow them to fill her thoughts this way. There were supposedly mountains to the northeast, thicker forests, and beyond them a great expanse of water across which no land could be seen. Legends, maybe, but she wanted to believe they weren’t.

The world might have moved on, but that didn’t mean she didn’t want to know it better.

She shrugged. Whatever Maggie had seen, she might be willing to keep it to herself and not make trouble; Beth had kept her share of Maggie’s secrets in her time. The boy from Jael who sometimes came to work as a farmhand, for instance, when Jael still lived. What he and Maggie got up to in the barn after sundown when he was supposed to be on his way home.

Exchanging words with Daryl the way she had… Surely that was innocent enough. Regardless of what her father might think.

“Was just talkin’. About where he came from. What he was doin’.” She would not mention the guns. She would not say what she knew. Because she _did_ know it, though she couldn’t have defended it with evidence if pressed. The guns alone would probably mean little to Maggie, though they were unusual and she must have marked them.

“So where _does_ he come from? What _is_ he doin’?”

“What he said. Just over the desert. Hills beyond. Didn’t say much else.” Beth smiled, half to herself, and it was a bit rueful. That was an understatement. She should have expected as much when she went to him. “Don’t think he favors talkin’.”

“ _Sounded_ like a hill man.” Maggie looked thoughtful. “I never heard anythin’ good about them.”

“Never heard much about them at all.” Beth shot her sister a look; this was the first time Maggie had seemed interested in conversing about Daryl since the man had come across the fields, and while there might be nothing in it, there might also be. Maggie wasn’t prone to manipulation as a rule, but Beth couldn’t entirely shake the feeling that this was an attempt to draw her out and make her reveal something. “He’s gonna move on tomorrow. Daddy told him not to come to the house. Probably we’ll hardly see him.”

But as she said this her gaze wandered to the kitchen’s window – open to let in the afternoon breeze – and though Daryl was out in the fields with her father, she felt something clutch at her stomach with the thought of what she might see.

Surely Maggie _must_ have noticed that.

“Daddy thinks he’s trouble,” Maggie said quietly. Whatever else she might be feeling, the thoughtful look hadn’t left her face, and there was a hint of worry beneath it. “Dunno why he’d let him stay, though, if that’s so.”

“What did he say?” This might be a chance for her to draw _Maggie_ out, though Maggie was good at keeping close the things she didn’t wish anyone to know. “Daddy. When he had you in the parlor yesterday.”

“Oh, he…” Maggie trailed off and her mouth tightened. She reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, absently leaving a bit of bean shell stuck to its ends. “Just that we needed to be watchful. Make sure he didn’t try anythin’.”

“He told you to get the shotgun.”

“Wouldn’t he say that for anyone strange comin’ on the land? Every time, he does that. You know it.”

She did. But there had been a look on Maggie’s face that she hadn’t expected, the same as her father. Her mother. Shawn. The way she had gripped the barrel of the gun, been ready to bring it up and aim. Something more had been said to her, though Beth was still fairly sure Maggie didn’t know the full of it. Wasn’t prepared to draw the same conclusions Beth was.

“He has the guns,” she said, pitching her voice low. No, she still wouldn’t say the word, wouldn’t say what they meant. But the things themselves were impossible to ignore, sitting between them like something awkward neither of them was rude enough – until now – to acknowledge. He had the guns, and neither of them had ever seen their like. Their size, the way they gleamed, their obvious lethality. The shotgun was a rickety old piece of junk by comparison. It fired well enough and it could probably bring someone down, but it required no particular skill to use, and it was clear that the guns slung low across Daryl’s hips did. Maggie had never seen them at all – at least, Beth was willing to bet a great deal on it.

But in one of her father’s books there had been a picture. Intricate, detailed. Impossible to mistake. Tonight, if she could get away, she would find it and study it. She would study the words that accompanied it.

“Yes,” Maggie said softly. “He has the guns.”

And she said no more. Beth didn’t press. She didn’t think pressure would be welcome. Whatever Maggie had been told…

There might be other ways to discover it.

“Maggie.”

Their father stood in the doorway, mopping his brow with an old bandanna; his clothes were sweat-stained and dusty from the fields. Beth caught distant movement in the corner of her vision and glanced at the window; Daryl by the tree, kneeling beside his gunna.

“Daddy?”

“Make sure you set another place for supper.” Her father paused and seemed to be considering something. Then he appeared to come to a decision. “He’ll be eating with us in the house tonight.”

Maggie’s eyes widened, but she said nothing. For Beth’s part, something jumped in the pit of her stomach. Apprehension, and not entirely unpleasant. She hadn’t expected this. But almost as soon as her father and Daryl exchanged first words, she had sensed that whatever mistrust her father felt was more complicated than it might otherwise be. This was confirmation.

He was going to eat with them. Break bread with them. That was no small thing.

“Alright, Daddy.” Maggie hesitated a moment more, then turned back to the beans. Beth took a breath, settled herself, and did the same.

~

Supper was quiet, which Beth expected. Quiet and a little awkward, for although her mother made valiant attempts at conversation, it was difficult to know what to say to someone who remained very much an open question, and questions themselves seemed territory into which no one especially wanted to tread. Before, Daryl had met them with either minimal responses or – in Beth’s case – outright hostility. So he said almost nothing and ate in nearly complete silence, but he ate a great deal – which Beth didn’t wonder at, given what probably lay ahead of him. And as supper progressed she noticed that he scanned the table and each face there with deep and unhurried attention, though he managed to be unobtrusive about it. Had she not been watching him with equal care, she might have missed it entirely.

Afterward she helped clear the table, exchanged a few words with her mother about what would be done with the few leftovers, and then found herself with some time of her own. Ordinarily her father might read to them – or she and Maggie might sing – but this evening her father sat alone by the fire, turning the pages of one of his books, his brow furrowed and his expression indicating that he was better not disturbed.

She recognized the book. It was the one which contained the illustration of the gun.

Driven by an impulse she didn’t completely understand, she went out onto the porch – and there she found Daryl, sitting on the steps and smoking. The end of the cigarette glowed brighter when he inhaled, casting the hard angles of his features into sharper light and shadow. He tapped ash onto the ground and tipped his head back, looking up at the sky, and though he didn’t turn she knew he was aware of her.

This time.

Without a word she crossed the porch and sat beside him - one step higher – and followed his gaze. The weeks were passing between the Peddler’s Moon, which marked late Full Earth, and into the Huntress Moon which accompanied the coming of Reaping. Once, she knew, each change would have been marked by a Fair Day, with games and dancing and a feast.

But the world had moved on since then.

Before she knew it, she was speaking.

“Cry your pardon,” she said softly, “for before. I spoke out of turn.” She didn’t truly believe it – or if she had, she didn’t especially care – but it seemed like the sort of thing it might be advisable to say.

Daryl only grunted and blew smoke into the air. She watched it curl into the dark, her fingers working at one hem of her trousers where some threads were coming loose. She was uncomfortable here with him, like this. But not as much as she might have expected to be.

Once more she thought, _I know him very well._

“You’ll be movin’ on tomorrow,” she continued, just as soft. “Where will you go?”

He grunted again and for a moment she thought he might not answer – which would only have been in keeping with what seemed to be his way – but for once he surprised her.

“Dunno. On. Maybe keep goin’ north.”

“What’s north?”

“North,” he repeated, as if this should be obvious, and shot her a look she couldn’t read. “Good a place to go as anywhere.”

“That’s not true,” she said immediately, an instinct rather than something considered. But wasn’t it so? Surely there must be places he wouldn’t go. Places no one would dare. “I hear there’s places worse than this. Poisoned lands. Where the muties get bad. More dangerous. Maybe…” And there a strange thing happened. Words came to her of something she had never heard, never seen in her father’s books or heard rumors of in the days when they still went to Jael to trade. They came to her, and as she said them she knew them to be true.

“Places where the dead get up and walk.”

This time when he looked at her it was quick and sharp – not angry but keen, as if he was seeing her in a way he hadn’t before. For a moment or two she thought he might say something. But he didn’t, and when he looked away again he sent another stream of smoke up to join the darkness.

“You’ve heard of ‘em?” she asked after a short period of silence. “Those places?”

He laughed, a low rough sound, fleeting. “Ask a lotta questions, dontcha?”

“Ain’t got many answers, do ya?”

He said nothing else. But in the dim light of his cigarette and the paler light of the moon, she thought she saw the slightest curve of a smile.

“I know your name,” she said. “You don’t know mine.” As if he should, as if he should care. As far as she could recall it hadn’t been said at supper. “It’s Beth.”

He leaned back a little, one elbow on the step above – closer to her than he had been. But he didn’t reply. She didn’t mind. She didn’t need him to say anything, she realized, and she never really had. It was enough that he listened, and heard her very well. And that too was familiar.

She thought she might tell him, ask him if he also felt it. But it lay there inside her, untouched and unasked, like a burden she couldn’t quite bear to take up. Some intuition told her that if she did, if she set that down between them, something would change and she would never be able to undo it. It would be the crossing of some line, and what lay on the other side might be neither easy nor friendly.

“Sleep sound,” she murmured, and got to her feet. But as she reached the door she heard him shifting where he sat, and when she turned back to him he had risen and was facing her, the stub of his cigarette dangling from his lips.

“Beth.”

She took a breath, and something like strange anticipation passed through her.

“Tell your da’ I say thankya.”

She gave him a smile, a little hesitant. He didn’t return it but he gave her a nod, identical to the one he had given her the first time he had faced her this way, and to her it felt like enough.

But all at once she didn’t want him to go.

It welled up in her like a spring river at its high and threatened to spill over, threatened to force her back to him and beg him to stay. Tell him that something _was_ here, something in him and in her that she didn’t understand and desperately needed to, that if he stayed they would somehow make it work with her father, they would find a way. They were racing thoughts, mad thoughts, and beneath them all – _over_ them all – she was terribly afraid.

He was trouble. He was. _Her_ trouble. He was the end of something. Or the end of a beginning.

Or the beginning of an end.

She turned, her heart pressing against the top of her throat and her eyes stinging with tears, and went into the house.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...Okay, this _has_ to be the last chapter for at least a couple of days, because I spent all of today writing it and it's frankly getting a little out of hand and I have other stuff I need to be writing for which I might actually be paid. So after this will come a short enforced break, but there's a great deal more to follow. 
> 
> This story is planned to the full and it will be told entire, tell ya true.

 

3

 

It was an hour before dawn when the slow mutants came bearing fire.

They came silently – surprisingly, for them, malformed and mutilated things not given to caring for stealth. That they bore fire – brandishing torches over their heads, at least the ones who could grip them – was also surprising. Some of their kind used tools but many others had neither the dexterity nor the intelligence to use them for more than the most basic tasks. That it was fire they bore was perhaps most surprising of all, or so Daryl thought later in the chaos of a mind disordered by pain and fear. In his experience, fire kept them at a distance. It was one of its many benefits.

But they came to the farm in the darkness, and the farm burned.

~

Beth stirred in her sleep. As they had been the night before, her dreams were troubling, but they weren’t as clear or as coherent. They were dark, roaring things like the hearts of storms, things like wind that pulled her and tore at her and swept her away into a screaming void where dead lights shone and where a red tide rose over her and prepared to crush her into a paste of meat and bone. She moaned thickly and turned over, tangling the sheets around her legs, and when the smell of burning corn came to her through the open window it simply bled into the dream and did not wake her.

But the cry did. It was high and sharp, and it pierced the dream and dragged her through the door it made.

It was Daryl.

She sat up in a single lunge, her legs still entangled, and shoved frantically at the covers. She should have been confused, and she was, but the confusion was dim and it felt unimportant in an essential way. The rest of her was all sharp focus, her mind narrowing to a needle’s point – what she didn’t understand, she would discover. She would make sense of it as she acted. The most important thing was to act.

In seconds she was on her feet, tugging off her night-shift and shoving herself into shirt and jeans and boots, tying her hair roughly back. She had never felt this way. Never in her life. Where it came from, she had no idea. But it didn’t feel like a new thing. It didn’t feel alien.

Reflexively, her hand dropped to her hip. As she hurried out into the hall – where she could see the faint light of lamps already lit – she realized she was reaching for a gun.

Later perhaps she would have time to be stunned.

Her father was already in the bedroom’s doorway, her mother behind; Beth caught a glimpse of her wide, terrified eyes and then Shawn’s hand was heavy on her shoulder as he pushed past her, Maggie in tow. “What is it?” he asked, his voice clipped. Again, Beth saw the man he might become. “We heard—”

“Dunno.” Her father moved rapidly toward the head of the stairs. “Maggie, get the—”

Below them the front door burst open and slammed into the wall, hard enough that something cracked. Behind it was Daryl, rushing forward, and his bow was in his hands. He lifted his head and the look in his eyes sent a finger of ice down Beth’s spine.

They were as hard and as sharp as chips of blue flint. They were killer’s eyes.

“The fields are on fire,” he said. He didn’t seem frightened. He didn’t even seem winded. “Ain’t by accident. It’s surroundin’ the house. Someone’s comin’.”

Behind her Maggie let out a heavy breath, almost a low moan. Beth half turned to her but she was already heading for her own room, going for the shotgun. Maggie might fear but Maggie wouldn’t falter. She never had.

“Who’s coming?” Her father descended the stairs toward Daryl, and while he didn’t sound exactly accusing, both words were issued like the jabs of a blade. “Who is it?”

Daryl faced him, impassive, the bow lowered but ready to raise. “I dunno,” he said, and Beth knew it instantly for a lie. Not a good one. “But there’s more’n one of ‘em.”

“If the fields are burning there’s not much we can do for them.” There was pain in her father’s voice, but it was nearly submerged under that cold solidity, like the rising of water ready to go to the ice of Year’s End. “They set the fire?” He looked back at Shawn without waiting for an answer. “Dress and get a weapon. The hatchet’ll have to do unless you can find something better.”

Daryl answered anyway. “Yar. Think so. Saw ‘em movin’ in the corn. They brought the fire.” He said nothing else, but what was left unsaid was clear enough. If they were burning the fields, they wouldn’t stop there. Whoever they were – _what_ ever they were, whatever their purpose – they wouldn’t satisfy themselves with corn and beans.

But it was incomprehensible. There was _no one,_ no one for countless miles around since Jael died. Since the last soul rose and blew away on the high desert wind. Who could this possibly be? Who would come here now, who would bring fire to the fields and willfully destroy one of the few things that kept them from ruin and starvation?

And she knew. She knew as she passed her father and started down the stairs, as she met Daryl’s hard gaze, and she made no attempt to hide her knowledge. He would see it very well.

It was him. Whoever they were, he had brought them. He had done this to them. He knew it as well as she did.

“I’ll go to the kitchen,” she called. She didn’t turn, and when she reached Daryl she passed him without a glance. “Get one of the big cleavers.”

“Beth.” Her father’s tone was sharp but she ignored him. Not now. She wouldn’t be sheltered from this now. She knew things about herself that no one else did.

Except perhaps one.

She heard her mother let out a low sob and didn’t allow it to push her back. She entered the kitchen, got the cleaver, returned to the hall. It didn’t matter what they were. It didn’t matter if the blame was properly laid at Daryl’s feet. All that mattered was that she meet this head-on and not be turned aside.

“Should run,” Daryl was saying to her father. The latter was dressed, and they were close, speaking in low voices. Maggie leaned by the door with the shotgun in her hands, peering out the window. Firelight flickered over her face and made her look like a stranger. “There’s too many of ‘em. I saw before I came in. You won’t outfight ‘em, but if you go now you might outrun ‘em.”

“This is _our farm_ ,” hissed her father. His teeth were slightly bared, and Beth had never seen him so desperately, fearfully angry. “Been in the family _six generations_. Kept us alive when nothing else has. The world has moved on but _this_ hasn’t. Hear me well: I won’t leave it. I’ll die here.”

“Your wife’ll die here? Your children?” Daryl’s gaze flicked to her and she took a breath. Maybe before he hadn’t seemed afraid, and it still wasn’t fear she saw there, but it _was_ desperation. As intense as that of her father. And something very much like guilt. “Don’t be a fuckin’ _idiot,_ man.”

“You go,” her father growled. “You run. You brought this on us, you save yourself now if it please ya.”

Daryl turned away and let loose a string of words that sounded like curses but which Beth hadn’t heard before and didn’t understand. Not the tongue she had spoken from birth. Something else. “I’ll go,” he said, and Beth’s stomach twisted into disappointed pain, but he went on. “I’ll go out, pick off what I can. See to your family. You wanna stay, they’re your weapons now.”

Her father took a long breath, and while something even harder seemed to settle in him, there was a weariness there as well. Deep, winding its way into his bones. “Maggie. Go with him. Do what you can. The rest of us, we’ll secure the house.”

“Can secure it all you want,” Daryl shot back, but he was already at the door. “They’ll still burn it down. With you inside. _Secure._ ”

He was gone, Maggie after him.

Her father watched him go, watched his eldest child. Beth moved toward him. She was still clutching the cleaver, but she had momentarily forgotten it. She couldn’t take her eyes off his face. He was no longer solid, no longer firm, and his expression had been overwhelmed by his fear.

And despair. There was despair in his eyes.

He didn’t expect them to live.

“Daddy,” she said softly, and touched his arm. She could run now, she realized. She could simply run down the dirt road, do what she could to dodge the fire and whatever else was coming for them out of the dark, make for the longer road beyond and perhaps the ruins and the shelter of Jael. She could leave her family to whatever doom her father seemed willing to consign them. She could avoid suicide.

Daryl wanted it. He wanted it for all of them. He had only just come to them but he was willing to fight for them, even as her father refused to flee to save their lives.

She loved him then, a little. Though she barely knew him ( _though I do, I do very well)._ It was small, like a spark. But it was there.

“Beth.” Her father looked at her, and it was as though he had never seen her before and was only now understanding who she was. Perhaps he did. Perhaps he _did_ see something in her, something no one else had. Not even Daryl, who appeared to see so much. Not even herself. He slid a hand into her hair and briefly he pulled her close. “I love you, child,” he murmured, and lowered his head to kiss her temple. “More than you can know.”

“Hershel, we’re ready.” It was her mother, and now she seemed calm. Hard as her father had shown himself to be. Beth looked past her father and saw that she clutched a butcher’s knife in her hand. “Shawn. Me. What’re we to do?”

“Get furniture,” her father said, and stepped away from her, pushing her gently back. He was releasing her, she thought. He was releasing her from everything. She fought back sudden, aching tears. She shouldn’t know these things. Not now. “The tables. Chairs. Whatever you can. Block the doors and the windows down here. Send Shawn to the porch, have him do whatever he’s able with Dixon and Maggie. Mayhap we can do what Dixon said, herd them into a single entry point and pick ‘em off if they don’t swarm us.”

But why wouldn’t they? If there were so many of them? Beth bit her lip hard enough that she tasted copper. She didn’t wait to hear more. No, she wouldn’t run. She couldn’t. She was bound to this place, surely as her father. She didn’t want to die here. But if it came to that she wasn’t sure she would run even then.

She went to the parlor and began working to shift the sofa.

~

Daryl was cursing nearly constantly. It came out of him in an unconscious stream as he leveled his bow, as he took aim. Already he had sent two bolts flying into the burning corn where he spotted movement, and what had been there moved no more. But only two, and by his count – a poor one, hampered by darkness and irregular light – there might be as many as twenty. Even thirty. He had caught glimpses of their faces before he went to the house to raise the alarm, glowing a faint greenish-yellow with the old poison that had ruined them. _Wrong_ faces, with features that weren’t where they should be. Some looking vaguely human and some not human at all. One he had seen walking upright on two legs but another wriggled along the ground like a grey-skinned slug with the face of a man. Even ones who could not and did not carry the fire were here, and he didn’t think they had come as spectators.

Slow mutants. He hadn’t seen sign of them in weeks. He had suspected there were none in this gentler land, that they kept to the lonely caves and gorges of the hardpan. They should not be here. Yet here they were, and they came with purpose.

The purpose wasn’t their own. He believed he knew whose it was. If he was correct, Beth was as well – the look in her eyes had told him everything. And Hershel. If he was correct, this was indeed his doing.

This was the trap. Not laid by Hershel, not laid with intent by the farm, but a honeypot set by another to draw him in, keep him there, and put him in a place where he would have to abandon them to their deaths…

Or remain to watch them die.

 _Love, also, is a thing to regard with mistrust._ His father’s voice, lifted in the over-solemn tone he adopted when he gave him and Merle their daily instruction in the ways of the gun. _It can provide a great deal of strength. A man who loves will fight to the last extremity to protect that to which he’s bound his heart. But he’ll be foolish, if his mind and his will are poorly shaped. Poorly disciplined. Love will become a weakness to be exploited. While he loves, his enemies will find ways to carry his heart in their pockets._

A weakness that had come to him, a little. He had laid part of his heart at this doorstep, and that should have not happened so quickly.

_Well, you’re weak, boy. You little shit. My hopes were highest for you, tell ya true. Merle was never made to carry them. Now you disappoint me, and it’ll kill you. In spirit if not in body._

“As if you ever cared about my fuckin’ _spirit,_ ” Daryl hissed, and loosed another bolt as a low, hulking mutant came out of the rows. It went down with the fletching bright and protruding from its thick forehead. Its torch fell guttering into the dust. Daryl lunged forward to snatch up the bolt; how many did he still have? Five? Six? Not enough, not if he kept bringing the mutants down in the rows where it would be insanity to try to retrieve them. The dust of the yard that surrounded the house provided a kind of firebreak, but it wouldn’t keep back the mutants themselves. Something else would have to stop them.

The guns weighed heavy against his hips.

_Not those. No. Never those._

“Dixon!” Maggie close behind him. “They’re closing in on the barn, I’m heading there!”

He barely spared her a nod, instead lining up another shot and letting it fly. This was madness. If it was a trap, he had strolled right into it and had _willfully_ refused to step away from its jaws.

_Ka is a fucking wheel. Over each man it rolls with no thought for pity, no heart for mercy._

When he dropped the mutant it let out a cry, moaning and sad. No, he felt no pity. He walked the rim of Ka’s wheel. But as the thing fell he let out a moan to match its own, and when pain rolled through him, stumbling back with the fire roaring in the night, he thought of Beth’s eyes and how they pierced him, laid him bare, and thought he might never see them again.

~

Beth had no idea how long she had been working, but sweat was rolling down her face, sticking her shirt to her back, and itching horribly. They had blocked everything they could, her father and mother and herself, but for the front door which might – if needed – act as a funnel for any that tried to come in. What they were – she had seen a glimpse of something as she covered one of the front windows, as Daryl brought it down with a bolt. A horrible thing, a thing from a nightmare. Like a mutie animal, but human. Or near to it. She had heard of such things. She never thought to see one.

But _why?_

“Good,” her father huffed as they propped the bookcase against the last parlor window. Her father’s books scattered across the floor, some of the pages already loosened and fallen from between the leather covers; it was such a small thing but it made her eyes sting in a way for which the increasing smoke didn’t fully account. “Done. Done well enough. Annette, if you’d—”

A scream cut through the air, and though the heat was rising – _not of the day,_ Beth thought hectically, _not of the day –_ it chilled everything. Not a human scream, no. No human could scream like that, so terrible and so mad.

A horse.

“The barn,” her mother whispered, choked. “Jesus, not the barn.”

“Maggie’ll—”

But through a crack between the edge of the bookcase and the window’s frame Beth saw Maggie, and her father’s voice cut off harder than before, as if Beth had hacked it with the cleaver.

She was silhouetted against the fire, her gun raised, the barn only yards to her right. She was standing with back straight, legs apart, strong and unafraid – in appearance if not in fact – but the misshapen things were closing in on her, five of them, three with torches raised and something hideously like smiles pulling at their rubbery lips.

 _They’ll kill her,_ Beth thought, and somehow the thought was calm. _Now, here, they’ll kill her, and I’ll never see her again. Of course they will. It could have been no other way._

Words from a great distance. Her own words, though she had never in this life spoken them.

_Our choice, and then it would be over. Or we'll be forced to do it when the farm and this house is overrun._

_No one can protect us._

At that moment a shriek came from the porch – Shawn, pained and terrified – and Beth thought no more. She snatched up the cleaver and tore away, running for the door, ignoring her mother’s cry. All was death now, death and death, and what she did in its face only mattered in as much as she might stave it off a little longer.

_It was always coming._

_It’s been like this before._

Shawn was sprawled on the porch, a mutant crouched over him and pinning him down with bony, pincer-like hands. Beth saw its dull glow, saw the flash of teeth like serrated knives in its grotesque mouth, and brought the cleaver down on the lump of its head. Black blood rushed from it like a dam bursting and it fell without a sound to Shawn’s side. Shawn twisted his body away, letting out a sob, and in the red firelight Beth saw that his arm hung nearly torn loose, the flesh ragged and crimson-dark, the bone pale. He was crying, trying to reach for it, his other hand glistening with his blood and the mutant’s together.

Somehow there was no horror in her. Not then.

There was no pity.

She pulled the cleaver free from the mutant’s skull with a hard wrench and bent to her brother. “I’ll come back for you,” she whispered, lifted her head and cried out, her voice rising over the fire’s howl. “Daddy! Come help! Shawn!”

She ran.

She saw everything falling to a thick slowness that was almost peaceful. She saw it all. The mutants surging from the corn. Daryl some distance away, bow raised and aiming, a bolt flying into one of their heads. She saw Maggie stumbling back, beating at three remaining mutants with the butt of the shotgun.

And she saw the barn in flames.

She rushed toward it. It was all she could think to do. The corn gone, the house – there was nothing else she could do there, not there while still saving this. The last thing they had, the last pillar on which their survival was built. She was cold, so cold; she was stone. She turned to Maggie, who had put some space between the attacking mutants and her, and managed to take one of them down with two well-placed hacks to the back of the neck. As it crumpled, burbling blood, she met Maggie’s gaze and saw the same numb despair.

Then a nod. “Go.”

She ran on. As she did she heard another cry behind her and recognized it as Daryl, and she thought _His guns, why doesn’t he use his goddamn_ guns.

And the first shot rang out like the crack of lightning. Immediately drowned in the panicked screams of the horses.

She reached the barn and pulled the heavy beam away from the door with a strength she hadn’t known she possessed, dropping it with a thump. She hauled the doors open and fell back, coughing, as smoke billowed out. Her eyes burned, tears obscuring everything, but beyond them she saw flames licking the walls, and the horses, rearing with their eyes rolling and wide, the whites showing bright with their terror – and beyond them, the cows.

She sprinted forward, wrenching open the pens as she went, screaming so loud her voice cracked and her throat – already raw from the smoke – felt as if it had to be bleeding. _Hi,_ she shrieked, raining blows against the backs of the cows, kicking viciously at their legs. If she could stampede them. If she could just do that, there might be a chance. _Get. GET. HI, you motherfuckers._

They shuffled, stumbled against each other, lowing in protest. Then they began to trot. To run.

The first of them pushed her back against the wall of the pen. The second knocked her down into the shit and the straw. She rolled, her mind still locked into that awful numbness, no longer feeling the heat of the fire so close but her one conscious thought to avoid the hooves that thundered all around her. But there were so many of them, all crowding toward the barn door, and all she could do was cover her head – useless – and think _I thought I would die here. Daddy thought I would die here. I will. I will._

A hand seized her and hauled her bodily up, practically threw her over the side of the pen. She hit hard on her back, the breath knocked out of her, and for a moment she only lay, dazed and staring up at the beams of the ceiling as they began to burn. Then Daryl’s face came into view, red with heat, sweat-soaked and furious. “The fuck’re you _doin’?_ Get _up¸_ you stupid little bitch.”

Somehow she shoved herself to her knees and then to her feet, though she tottered and almost fell again. Her body was aching everywhere, her lungs sobbing, but it was all distant. All unimportant. She hurled herself past him, sprinting for the door. “The stock,” she yelled over her shoulder. “Threaded stock. Don’t you get it? It’s all we _have_ now!”

He caught up to her just as she left the barn. “So you’re gonna set ‘em loose in the _fire?_ ”

“If they run we can round ‘em up again.”

“You’re crazy,” he said, and he sounded almost bewildered. “You’re absolutely _fuckin’_ crazy.” He grabbed her and dragged her away.

But the house was burning.

For a moment she only stood, gazing at it, her mouth hanging open. The numbness was lifting, and beneath it was pain as if she had been beaten, been kicked over and over in the belly until she was nothing more than a single immense bruise. The flames billowed through the windows, the glass shattered, and as she watched burning beams fell from the porch roof and sent up rushes of sparks.

She saw Shawn writhing down the steps. He was on fire. His hair, his back. Of Maggie, there was no sign at all.

“No,” she whispered. “No.” And tore forward, away from Daryl’s hands, clawing her way through the air.

“ _Stop,_ ” he cried – screamed – but she no longer heard him. In the last rational part of her she already knew there was nothing she could do. There was no saving this. There never had been. This was always coming, because it had already happened. She saw the barn and the house burning in the dark as if in a distant memory, and she saw the shambling of things like people that were people no longer, torn flesh and so much blood.

She would die here. She would die with her family, and everything would be all right.

_Because there are other worlds than these._

Daryl caught her. He caught her around the chest and dragged her backward, holding her so tightly he hurt her, and as he did she saw her father in the doorway. His skin was blistered, half his hair burned away, but his face was calm. So calm. He was dying and he was so calm.

“Dixon!” he cried above the fire. Dimly she was aware that mutants were staggering toward them. “Get her away! Get her away now!”

“Daddy, _no!_ ” Again she tried to shake herself free. Again Daryl held her, even tighter, and when he hauled her back he practically lifted her off her feet. She screamed again, wordless, and beat at his arms, but he held her. He held her and though it might have been sweat or blood, she was sure she felt tears on the back of her neck.

“I love you, Bethy,” her father said – quiet but she heard him, she _did_ – and the fire ate him.

She would have fallen then if Daryl hadn’t borne her up. She was no longer fighting him. There was no point. There was nothing. The world was moving on and taking her with it, and she had no choice but to let it do so. The fire and the mutants and the night and Daryl himself – all were screams.

The roar of his gun.

She saw the flashes as he fired. Saw him aim one handed, shoot and shoot, saw more mutants fall. Saw him shoot true, felt the death in his hand. He _was_ death, he had brought death to her, brought it like a plague, murdered her family, and while before she had loved him – and perhaps loved him still – now she hated him enough to visit his own death upon him.

The sharp whinny of a horse, close behind. All at once she was being lifted, shoved onto its back, and he was up in front of her. On pure instinct she wrapped her arms around him and the stock of his crossbow dug painfully into her cheek. The horse reared and somehow he kept himself up, and she held to him and didn’t fall. No saddle, no bridle or reins, but he rode anyway.

They rode.

Hot wind yanked at her hair and scorched her cheeks. They were galloping through the flames, the dim glowing shapes of the mutants rushing by, and perhaps she was still screaming. She no longer knew. She couldn’t look back, couldn’t look at anything, the world blurring away into a helpless flood of tears.

 _Gone gone gone._ She might as well be dead anyhow.

_Ka is a mother. Fucking. Wheel._

_It grinds, little girl. It grinds your bones to make its bread._

The flames rose in a red wave and closed behind them like a cloak.

~

They stopped once, far down the road on a small rise. She didn’t want to look but she did, and as she did she almost tumbled from the horse’s back. Nothing but flame, all flame, rising high into the last of the night. There were no mutants to be seen. There wasn’t even a house, a barn. It was simply a lake of fire, with a crumbling tower of it rising in its center. She sobbed once, low and broken, and turned away.

Then she saw him.

He was standing on a low hill to their right, cast into a black shape against the reddish light of dawn. But no, it wasn’t only that light – he was dressed all in black, cloaked and cowled, and in some illumination she couldn’t have named she saw the barest hint of a thin, sardonic mouth pulled into a darkly amused smile. She hated him at once, though she did not know him – hated him and feared him, and knew he had spun the last hour of this last night for his own entertainment. And for something else.

He raised a hand to them. “Hile, gunslinger,” he called. “Hile and well met. I see you’ve found your dan-tete. Well done.”

Daryl froze. Froze hard and literally: every muscle in his body seemed to tense, seemed to grow cold. Beth merely watched, wordless and breathless. This was somehow all, she sensed. This was not the full of it, of what had come and what was coming and all that might yet be, but it was a glimpse. It was a glimpse. A single blade of grass in a vast field.

_He flees across the desert. He is followed. But he is here as well._

“Turn aside, gunslinger,” the man said, quieter. More serious. The smile had died away. “Turn aside and follow the path set for you. There is still time.”

“ _Fuck_ you,” Daryl breathed, and dug his heels into the horse’s flanks. There was a jolt, her own hard gasp, and the road swallowed them as the sun rose.

They went north.

~

She dreamed, then. Some time later, leaning against him with the road passing beneath like a river, she did. She dreamed and found herself standing among roses, more than she could ever count; a world of roses, so red they were like blows upon her eyes. Red like an ocean of blood, all the blood spilled in all the many worlds for a singular terrible purpose.

 _The end,_ she thought, and lifted her head and her gaze. _The end. Oh God, the end of all._

Before her, far away and yet so close, rising against a ruddy penultimate sunset, was a great dark tower.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter concludes part one. The first chapter of part two is coming within the next week. 
> 
> At this point I'm sure of several things. The first is that this is without question a novel. How long I don't know, but that's the scope of what we're dealing with. The second is that, while I was uncertain regarding whether or not I could pull this off, I can. It'll work. 
> 
> The third is that we are not talking about only one book. This is bigger than I thought. 
> 
> The fourth is that people are actually reading this. Not a lot of you, at least not so far, but it does seem like there's at least a little interest in it, and I'm very grateful for that. Again, I would write this anyway just to get it to leave me alone, but that there are a few people who care about it is a wonderful added incentive. So to the people reading - and commenting - I say thankya. Much so. 
> 
> Stories are wonderful things. That's where I'll leave this.

4

They rode until sunset.

They didn’t gallop. Not for long. In between her fitful periods of unconsciousness and waking Beth heard Daryl murmuring to the horse, soothing her, slowing her to a trot and then to an easy walk. The horse had been panting, her flanks soaked with sweat, but she seemed to be calming. Perhaps she would be all right, Beth thought vaguely, as if the fate of the mare was now her primary concern. If they could water her. Find her some feed. Give her a brushing, a good rubdown. Find her a barn in which to sleep. 

She burst into tears. Then grayness took her again. Through it all Daryl did not speak to her. 

She was aware of a few things. She was aware of the burns on her face and arms – not serious, but tight hot skin, as if she had taken far too much sun. She was aware of the unpleasant smell of singed hair – his, she thought, not only hers – and her own worsening thirst. That last, like the deep ache in her muscles and joints, felt distant and unimportant. But when Daryl tugged the horse to a halt sometime after midday and set Beth down in the shade of a thick-trunked tree, she gulped at the mouth of his canteen as he pressed it to her lips. He pulled it back and muttered something about her making herself sick. She protested, but when he gave her the canteen again she drank more slowly. 

_The horse,_ she thought – perhaps said – but dimly she heard the sound of running water. A stream? Maybe. The hot months of Full Earth had not quite dried them all. 

She dozed for a while. When consciousness returned to her they were moving again. She was no longer sitting behind him; she was leaning back against his chest and he had one arm around her, holding her up, his other hand tightly curled into the horse’s mane. He held her with no gentleness, indeed as if he resented having to do so – his muscles were tense. She felt that he was trying to do what he had to while touching her as little as possible.

Her eyes were the hardpan, all grit and choking dust. Every blink was pain. But she saw the road ahead of them, and rocky ground with tufts of yellow grass, all cast in the light of a lowering sun. Flat ground. No trees in sight. In the distance were the faded bumps of what might be hills. _He’s going into the deadlands,_ she thought feverishly. _Taking me into the deadlands to be dead and to walk with him forever._

“Take me back,” she croaked. “Take me home.”

His arm tightened around her and he let out a soft breath. He said nothing. 

Neither did she. She let herself sag back against his chest and closed her eyes. She still hated him, but not with any particular heat now. It was a weary kind of hate, a hate that was accompanied by a sense that everything was profoundly pointless. Her hate wasn’t a thing worth caring about. Neither was whatever love she still felt for him – that strange, sudden love that couldn’t possibly be explained by what had happened in the days she had known him. 

She did not enjoy his touch. But, in a way that ached in her gut, she felt safe with him. She should not have. It was insanity to feel that way, given what he had done. But she did. 

The sun sank toward the line of hills that stretched out on their left. They were still going north, and the road ran straight ahead until she could see it no more. The land around them was not getting any greener, but neither was it getting drier. What they were riding through couldn’t properly be called a desert, at least not a desert as she thought of it. Once or twice she saw anemic brooks, really no more than cracks in the ground with thin sludge running through them, but it was moisture, and lichen grew on the rocks at their banks.

She had never in her life been this far from home. Jael was south of the farm. She never had any reason to come here.

It was dusk when at last Daryl turned them off the road and tugged the mare to a halt by an overhang of rock no more than four feet high. It was almost nothing, but Beth supposed it was a kind of shelter, and he had chosen it for that purpose.

He slipped off the horse’s back and reached up for her. She murmured something about being able to do for herself, but when she tried vertigo seized her and she nearly fell. Daryl said something about her having the sense of a gnat and tugged her down into his arms, set her on her feet.

“Can you walk?”

She nodded before she was sure, but he released her and she found she could. She stumbled toward the overhang and sank down in its shadow, pushing her hair out of her face. It was the most alert she had been since they fled the farm, and as she lifted her head and rubbed at her eyes – wincing – she saw the first glimmer of stars.

He was a black shape standing over her. Merely the featureless form of a man. “Have to get kindling,” he said, and was gone.

For long moments – in truth she wasn’t certain of the time – she simply sat, her legs folded to the side, staring dully at the sky. She felt hollow, as if something had reached into her and taken out every organ, left her a shell of skin and bone. There was nothing in her that could allow her to feel more than the weak signals her nerves sent her – hunger, thirst, dim pain. She didn’t feel like a living thing at all.

_Places where the dead get up and walk._

If she could cry now, it might be better.

She looked down. He had left his gunna sack close to her, within her reach. She leaned to it, opened it and found the canteen and drank a little. The water stung her cracked lips. She sat back again, the canteen in her lap. Her mind was turning the fact of its presence over and over within itself, examining its angles, its lines. The logic of it. Gradually she understood, and the hate in her – which she believed had gone to some final coldness – flared into anger.

He had planned to go. He had gone back for it. Before he came to take her from the barn. She hadn’t seen the sack slung over his shoulder before. She hadn’t noticed it after, but she had seen more than she had known at the time, and now she remembered it.

He had known he would leave. Leave her father, her mother, Maggie and Shawn. He had been prepared, then, to abandon them in those final minutes.

 _It would have made no difference,_ some part of her whispered. _You were all already dead._

But the anger remained. Her fingers tightened around the canteen and her jaw clenched.

He returned a few minutes later, carrying a bundle of thick sticks and dry grass, and crouched, setting about building the fire. From his sack he withdrew flint and struck sparks against the kindling. She heard him say something, very quietly, not to her.

_Spark-a-dark, where's my sire? Will I lay me? Will I stay me? Bless this camp with fire._

The sparks caught and flickered. Presently he added the sticks and little flames rose. Looking at them, nausea twisted at her and she had to turn her face away.

She heard the sound of the horse’s hooves, receding. Daryl was leading her to water, perhaps. She hoped. The horse must be coming to the end of what she could do without proper rest, without food – though perhaps here she could graze a little. Regardless, she couldn’t go on this way. Then again, there was little they could do now. This, too – this last piece of her life – they had brought it with them only to doom it.

 _Mary,_ she thought, grabbing hold of the name. She hadn’t even noticed which mare it was, but now she knew it by her mane, her coloring – black and honey-brown. Mary. The mare’s name was Mary.

Somehow it seemed important.

Time passed and she slipped into a half doze, until something touched her arm. She looked up and saw that Daryl had returned, that he was crouched by her and was holding out a piece of jerky. She stared at it as if she had no idea what it was, then took it from him. It was salty, unpleasantly so, and again her lips stung sharply, but she made herself eat. She didn’t know why she did so, because it – like everything – felt pointless, but something drove her to it. She had been ready to die in the house with the others. Yet now it seemed she wanted to stay alive.

He sat back on his heels, staring at the fire, and the expression on his face was unreadable. Unreadable because there was nothing in it that she could see. No emotion. Only a hard flatness like the ground itself. If he was grieving, if he was sorry, she saw no sign of it.

“You meant to leave us,” she said.

He didn’t look at her, didn’t respond. She spoke again. She expected nothing from him, she realized, but the words pushed themselves out of her all the same.

“You made yourself ready to go before you came for me. You knew we were gonna die and you were gonna leave us. You were gonna let Mama and Daddy burn. You were gonna let all of us burn.” Before she realized what she was doing she had picked up the canteen and thrown it at him. It hit him in the arm and fell into the dust, perilously close to the fire, and when he jerked his head up he appeared bewildered. He reached for it, put it away, and still he said nothing.

If she didn’t love him, she thought, she wouldn’t feel like this now.

“I hate you.” He was no longer looking at her but she still stared at him, willing her eyes into points. The tips of blades. Things that might impale him and leave him bleeding. “I hate you, you sonofabitch.”

“Go to sleep,” he said.

“Take me back.”

“It’s night. Can’t.”

“You _won’t._ ” She might have been snarling at him if she had the strength, the will, but she only spoke in a voice that was almost monotonous, as if she was reciting some passage from memory that she had retained but for which she cared nothing. “You didn’t before when I asked you. You could but you won’t. Tomorrow. Take me back tomorrow if it’s just the dark that’s stoppin’ you.”

He did look at her then, his shaggy hair shadowing his eyes, but she saw enough of them to read them. His features might be impassive but his eyes were not. He was a bad liar. Even with his eyes he was a bad liar.

He _was_ sorry. He _was_ guilty.

It gave her no pleasure to see it.

“Why the fuck you wanna go _back?_ There’s nothin’ there.”

“My _home_ is there.” She did put some force into that, some steel. She felt what was behind it, beneath the tired numbness. “My family, they’d—”

“Your family’s dead.” He said it flatly, no cruelty or anger but as if he was stating a fact like any other. _Water is wet. The sky goes on forever._

_Fire burns._

“You don’t know that. You can’t.” A sudden thickness in her throat, a burning in her eyes. So she wasn’t necessarily done crying. But she wouldn’t cry in front of him, not now. She was damned if she did that. Damned if she was going to let him do that to her, regardless of whether he meant to. “You didn’t see ‘em all. Mama could’ve… Maggie…”

“They’re _dead,_ ” he repeated, a little harder. “Get it through your head, girl. Can’t do nothin’ about it now.”

“I need to go back.” Abruptly the steel left her and she was almost pleading, almost crying again. She pushed at her hair – distracted, jittery movements. A kind of chaotic desperation, like a wind that turned and turned and found no direction but only pulled things into the air to turn with it. “Daryl… I _need_ to do this. Do it and you can do whatever else you want. Just… Please.” She hated herself for that word. Not as much as she hated him and not at all in the same way, but she did. She couldn’t stop being weak. She didn’t want to. “You _owe_ me that.”

He started very slightly, as if she had touched something in him, found some point of softness. He raked his hair back from his face and covered his mouth with his hand, looking once more into the low flames. He appeared to be thinking.

She had seen softness in him. Tiny fragments of a glimpse. When he had spoken to her that last evening, when he told her a little of what he planned to do. That hint of a smile, which felt like it was just for her. Telling her to give her father his thanks.

“Alright,” he said finally. He let out a heavy sigh and dropped his hand. “Alright. Fuck, you…” He trailed off and closed his eyes, and pain flashed across his face.

She waited for him to say something else. What she felt was not gratitude. Nor was it relief. In truth, she thought, a healthy part of her _didn’t_ want to go back. Didn’t want to see. She had not said goodbye before, and returning to the farm would mean some manner of goodbye, whether she intended so or not. A goodbye unlike any she had ever given.

She wasn’t sure she was strong enough.

He was quiet for a long time. She thought he might be done with speaking. Night insects were beginning their singing, but they didn’t sound like the ones that always sang at night at the farm, nested in the fields. Those had been sweet, and she had loved them for all the times she had fallen asleep to their song. These were rough, dry, somehow like the grass within which they probably rested.

She would never fall asleep to that song again. It was gone. Everything was gone.

“Did you even want me to come for you?”

She jumped. Not much, and she immediately hoped he hadn’t noticed, but she did. Not just because of his sudden speech, but because of the question itself. Then again, bluntness seemed to be his way, when he cared to talk at all.

She found she wasn’t sure of her answer. So she didn’t answer at all. And he didn’t ask again.

After a while, when he exhausted the wood he had gathered and the fire was burning down, she curled onto her side and closed her eyes. She didn’t know if she would sleep. Her thoughts were at once sluggish and racing, disordered. They had no object, no purpose. She wished she could still them. Perhaps this was grief. Perhaps this was simply how things would be.

But sleep did come to her, bit by bit. Her mind went quiet. Once more she felt her own emptiness, and now it was preferable. She sank into it, releasing everything else.

The last thing she was aware of was the sensation of coarse cloth sliding over her raw skin. It hurt a little but not much, and as it covered her she realized she had been cold, that she had begun to shiver. And she realized what it was.

Daryl. He was covering her with his poncho.

Beth slept.

~

He woke her at dawn and they took a little water, a little more jerky. Then they rode.

As Beth thought, Mary was reaching the end of what she could do for them without proper caring for. She walked heavily, a bit more slowly than she might have done – Daryl, to his credit, didn’t try to push her but only spoke softly to her, stroking her neck. The land around the farm was greener, wetter – perhaps once they reached it they could let her rest. Let her recover her strength before they—

Before they what? Moved on again?

Before she moved on with him?

It was horrible. It should have been unthinkable, given everything. Yet she had thought it.

_You honestly think you can stay there? In the ruins? The ashes? Even if any of the fields survived, any of the cows? The chickens? You can rebuild the thing all by yourself, this thing into which you were born and which you had only begun to care for? With the ashes of your entire family, their charred bones? You can live that way? You’re that strong?_

She took a breath. _I am strong._

_Not enough._

This time she was awake and seated behind him, her arms once again around his waist, and she saw clearly the land through which they had traveled the day before. And she saw before long that she hadn’t missed much in her periods of grayness. It was a long, long stretch of flat sameness, mostly featureless but for cracks in the ground made by long-passed water and rock overhangs of the kind under which she had slept. Twice they _did_ pass small streams, but they were small indeed – near dry, though if any significant rains came as the months moved into Reaping they might yet swell a bit. Regardless, it was water, and though Daryl didn’t refill the canteen when they halted at both, he let the mare drink what she could.

As they moved on – the mare’s gait a little quicker and a little lighter after they stopped for the second time – Beth considered speaking to him. What she might say. What she could say, now, after everything she had spit at him the night before. She didn’t feel sorry for any of it; nothing she said was wrong, it was all deserved, and she thought he knew it and agreed. But she had asked him to do something for her, and regardless of what he did or didn’t owe her, he was doing it.

And without a great deal of fuss, truth be told. He had resisted, yes, but he wasn’t resisting now. He wasn’t chiding her or complaining that she was making him – _as if I could make him do anything_ – ride a full day in the direction opposite from the one in which he had been traveling.

_But he said he wasn’t traveling anywhere. He said that._

She also hadn’t believed him.

Regardless, she said nothing to him. The hatred – so sharp and so cold the night before – had faded from her, but a heavy kind of blankness had replaced it. If she didn’t hate him, and she couldn’t find whatever part of her had somehow loved him, she had no idea what to make of him at all. He was here, with her – he could have left her to burn, yes, but despite what she had accused, he hadn’t, and she wasn’t sure he ever intended to do so. Because he could have released her to the burning arms of the house, and instead he had held her so tightly he bruised her ribs.

He could have been rough with her. While he hadn’t exactly been warm, as far as it went he had been gentle.

He could have thrown her from the horse when her periods of unconsciousness made it difficult to keep her steady behind him. Instead he had seated her in front of him and continued.

He had fed her. Given her water. Both from his own supplies, which did not appear to be abundant.

He covered her in the night when she began to shiver.

_And she knew him._

She closed her eyes and leaned her head against his shoulder – not out of any desire to touch him more than she already was but simply because all at once she was tired, and he was there. He tensed briefly, but otherwise gave no sign that he even noticed.

The sun passed its height and began to sink toward the horizon. When she at last lifted her head she saw they were passing the low hill on which they had seen the man cloaked all in black. There was no sign of him now – not that she had really expected there to be – but he didn’t feel like a dream. He felt somehow more _real,_ more _there_ than anything else that night.

Anything but the look on her father’s face as he burned.

He had spoken. Not to her but to Daryl. What had he said?

_Hile, gunslinger. I see you’ve found your dan-tete._

Words she didn’t know, not even from her father’s precious books. But she thought of the stream of strange words Daryl had uttered in the house, which she had taken for curses. Perhaps they had been, yes.

But she was no longer certain.

He wasn’t just a hill man. Or he was, but that was only skin stretched over fat and muscle and the webwork of veins and nerves and the forests of bone. There was a great deal more. More than he would likely ever say. More than he maybe even knew.

Because she knew him.

_We played the game. We did, and I said I never and he said he never and I saw things I had never seen in him before. Thought things about him. That was the I never. That was the real one._

Then she saw the farm and every other thought fell away like dead leaves.

She sat upright, numb. Too numb to feel horror. She might not have been able to in any case; feeling anything seemed beyond her. Even breathing. She had to remind herself to inhale. She had known it would be bad, it must be bad, but they turned up the shorter dirt road that led through the fields to the yard and the house, and she had no words for what it was. She stared, her mouth open, her heart a knot in her chest.

He stopped in the center of the yard, the scar around which a greater wound stretched. Without speaking she slid down from the mare’s back and stepped forward, _willed_ herself to do it, her hands loose and open at her sides. _Walking dead,_ she thought vaguely. _Here I am walking dead._

Beth Greene walked toward what was left of her life.

~ 

Daryl watched her, uncertain. She had asked for this, had done so in a combination of bullying and begging – though perhaps not so much with words – and he had given in, given it to her, because she was _right:_ he did owe her. He had done this, like he had done so many other things, and that the Man in Black had driven him straight into it like cattle onto a killing floor made little difference in the end. He had come and behind him had come the fire.

Now he wondered if he had done the right thing. Not because of how far he had gone out of his own path – _turn aside, gunslinger, and follow the path set for you_ – but because of her, because of what he saw in the way she carried herself, held her shoulders, her head. He didn’t need to see her face to know it.

This was beyond grief. He thought he knew grief, thought he might know it to its very extremity. This was not that. This might be something he couldn’t begin to comprehend.

He had never lived in a world of illusions, except perhaps one great one that had destroyed everything in the course of its own destruction. But she had. Now they were gone, and all that was left to her was a world that had long ago moved on.

_The death of faith is beyond the death of any man or woman, for faith cannot be mourned, and the healing that accompanies grieving will never come. When faith dies, all life dies with it. A man may continue to walk and talk, to drink and break bread, but he will be a shell, hollow and purposeless, and in the end it will kill him surely as a cancer._

_Is faith an illusion, Daryl? Should we mourn its passing, or should we merely be grateful that all illusion has been shed and a life of cold, flat realism can finally begin?_

Not the voice of his father, no.

It sounded a little like the voice of Hershel Greene.

Shaking himself slightly, almost completely at a loss, Daryl dismounted the horse and looked at what his coming had done.

The fields were not all gone. That they would yield much of a crop come Reaping was impossible, but here and there in the firescar a few green stalks had somehow survived. But the place where the house and the barn had been was a charred black horror that blew with gray ash, twisted beams poking jaggedly up like the broken teeth of a man in the final, lethal grip of devil grass. There was hardly any sense of structure, of order. It was a burned chaos. It was difficult, in fact, to say for certain where anything had originally been.

Or perhaps he simply didn’t want to look hard enough.

Yet into this ruin, Beth was walking.

He wanted to run to her. He wanted to grab her and pull her back – not as he had the night before, violently desperate, but calmer, gentler. Pull her back and tug her against his chest, fold his arms around her and turn her head away. She shouldn’t have to look at this. Shouldn’t have to see it now. Before had been bad enough. But this.

His own mother, the house in which he had dwelled the first few years of his life – not luxurious by any means but better than the shack that replaced it – burned down to nothing. Unrecognizable. No body to bury. No way to say goodbye. Hershel had _given_ that to her. He had given her a goodbye, told her he loved her, had gifted her with so much more than most ever got. Why couldn’t she content herself with that? Why wasn’t it enough? Why did she have to _see?_

She was standing in the remains of the house now. Just standing and looking down. A few yards away from her – perhaps where the porch had been – he saw something that might be blackened bone and averted his eyes. He wasn’t squeamish. He couldn’t afford to be. But.

She knelt in the ashes and rummaged through them, heedless of the way they smeared her hands and forearms. She pulled something free and held it, looking down at it. He still couldn’t see her face, at least not clearly. He was prepared to consider that a blessing.

But when she turned to him he saw that she held a little book in her hands.

She stood for a moment more, looking at him – to the book, then back to him. Then she started back toward him. Suddenly – only for a fragment of an instant – he thought he might run. Simply turn and sprint back toward the road, leave her and the terrible possibilities and the strange, horrible unknowns she represented. She would ruin him. He knew it, was _sure_ of it. She was no dan-tete, no little savior. She was his destruction, and she was coming to him now.

He stood his ground and when she reached him he didn’t move.

_Stand. Stand and be true._

“Here.” She held up the book for his inspection. It was intact, he noted with some surprise. The cover was scorched, but otherwise it seemed untouched. Miraculous – but he had seen things like that many times, and found little trouble in accepting it. It was, in fact, easier to accept than almost anything else around them.

And before him.

“It’s my journal,” Beth said softly. “I kept my days in it. Whatever happened… I wrote it down. What I thought. What I felt.” She pulled it back and hugged it to her chest. For a moment she looked so young – a child, innocent but lost and afraid, and never to find adulthood.

Then it passed, and what he saw in her was no child but a woman, hardening, growing colder, turning her eyes to the road and leaving everything else behind. It was the span of a second, yet it seemed to take a very long time. He drew in a breath and held it, and couldn’t take his eyes off her.

As he watched, Beth grew up.

She turned her attention back to him. It was deep into late afternoon and soon dusk would come, but for now the light was low and red – fiery. It caught the loose, wild strands of her hair and set her soot-streaked face to burn. It sent a light into her eyes, and made them sharp and clear.

She was beautiful, he thought. She was beautiful and terrible, and she would destroy him.

And he might be happy to be destroyed.

“I want to go,” she said, still clutching the little book. When her gaze met his it was unwavering. “Will you take me?”

Slowly, once, he nodded.

They left the farm behind and rode north again, and the sun slipped into night.

~  


And did she ever return? Did she make a home there, did she walk the fields, did she care for that place and love it and lie in her room beneath the Peddler’s Moon and listen to the night creatures sing their night songs?

Did she see it again?

Perhaps. Ka is a wheel. It turns.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...So I'm not good at not writing this. That appears to be a refrain. 
> 
> SO HERE IS THE BEGINNING OF PART TWO. In which some important things are revealed. As usual I offer heartfelt thanks to the people giving me company through this. I think very soon some interesting things will be happening. Say... Perhaps some familiar faces. Perhaps. 
> 
> And the wheel just keeps on turnin'.

 

**Part Two: Reaping**

 

1

 

In the last of the daylight, no more than two miles north, they found the cattle.

They were still in the kinder, greener lands that surrounded the farm, where a deep, clean creek ran and there was grass suitable for grazing. So the cows were grazing, their tails swishing placidly to drive away evening flies. A few were lying down, making beds for the night. As Daryl tugged Mary to a halt, a few more looked up and gazed at them with an expression of vague interest, chewing their cud.

Daryl had only seen them briefly before, enough to confirm for himself that they did exist and they were threaded stock as Hershel claimed – bloodlines pure and untainted, no sign of mutation in them. He would never have called a cow a beautiful thing, but looking at them now in the grass, their pale hides paler still in the light of the rising Peddler’s Moon, he thought the word might apply.

Not everything from the farm had died. And these might do well on their own, at least for a time. They might live and be happy, in as much as cattle did.

Beth had tensed as soon as she caught sight of them, her arms still around his waist, and he wondered if she might dismount and go to them. Surely they must draw her. Surely she must have loved them, as she loved all of the farm, and surely now having lost it she was all the more keenly aware of what that love meant.

But she had said goodbye.

Still, she did slide down after a few moments of silence, and she did move into the grass. Daryl watched her, a little figure growing indistinct in the twilight, gray except for the moonlight-silvered flash of her hair.

She went to the nearest cow and held out a hand. It snuffled at her, then went back to its cud. Whether or not it knew her was impossible to tell. Daryl hoped it did. Yet he found the idea that all the cattle might forget her – forget the entire farm – strangely attractive. The world moved on and more often than not that meant hard loss and harder times, but sometimes it meant release from pain. Sometimes it meant the acquisition of a greater simplicity.

He often wished he might forget.

Beth stood, looking around at the cows. Then she turned and came back to him, her shoulders straight and her hands loose at her sides. He thought again that she looked older, far older than she had when he had seen her. The world beyond the farm might not break her now.

But at such a cost.

She stopped beside Mary and stroked the horse’s hide, her neck, murmuring something Daryl couldn’t hear. Then she tilted her head up to him, her face half shadow.

“Let her go.”

He blinked. “Cry pardon?”

“Let her go,” Beth repeated patiently. “The mare. Mary. She shouldn’t come with us. Let her stay here. With them.” She jerked her head over her shoulder. “She deserves better than what we can give her. She’ll die out there. You know it.”

“We go on foot, _we_ could die out there.”

“We might anyway.” She took a breath. “You know what’s there better than me. But I can guess. It’s bad. Wherever you’re going…”

She trailed off and shrugged.

The girl was maddening. Absolutely maddening. He glanced down the road, the road they had already traveled – that land, he knew. But what lay beyond it…

She was half right. But not all. There were things he didn’t know. Many, many things.

But she was a fool.

_No. No, Daryl, she is wise. She is wise in ways far beyond your ken._

“Alright,” he murmured. Green grass, water. The company of other animals. Very likely such a relative paradise would not last, and not for long. But even that time might be better than nothing at all. He shouldn’t care for an animal, he was well aware – not for an animal over his own life. But he had always possessed a softness for animals, and now it rose in him and he couldn’t resist her.

_I think that might continue to be a problem._

He gave the horse a final pet and dismounted. He looked down at Beth and she looked straightly back. There was no gratitude in her that he could see, but there _was_ a kind of satisfaction, a kind of approval. And he realized it was an approval he might come to crave, and that was very dangerous.

He slapped the mare lightly on her side. “Git.”

She trotted off to join the cattle in the grass. Daryl watched her go, deeply unsettled. Yes, traveling on foot meant harder going and greater peril, as well as lesser speed. But it wasn’t as though he hadn’t done it before.

He surveyed the sky. Almost full dark now, but for the moon’s light. Enough to see by, enough to find material for a fire. But this close to the animals, though he was perfectly capable of making a fire that wouldn’t spread…

“We’ll walk a little way,” he said. “Make camp.”

Beth favored him with a small smile, and they did.

~

“Who was he?”

Daryl looked up sharply and Beth looked back, bemused. A curious feeling had come over her – not exactly numbness, at least not like before, because that numbness had been a hard cap over a world of pain, and it had left her feeling hollow and dead. This… This was almost a kind of peace. Her anger wasn’t gone. Her grief wasn’t gone. But she was not dead. She had survived. She had seen the ashes of her home and the blackened bones of her family, and she had not been among them. She felt her own breath, the beat of her heart. She had lived. She didn’t know how, or why, or what would happen now, but she _would_ live.

The first step out of the ashes, she thought, was realizing that fact. Understanding it. Facing it in all that it meant.

She would live. Now she had questions.

They had made camp another mile or so beyond where the cattle grazed, on the rim of a shallow gully at the bottom of which flowed one of the thin streams they had passed. Tomorrow, she hoped, she might use it to bathe at least a little. An unfamiliar tree a few yards away actually bore fruit: small and tough and an unhealthy shade of brown – and Beth had been skeptical about whether they should eat it at all - but Daryl had sniffed it and declared it safe. It was intensely sour but it was something besides jerky, and several of them went into Daryl’s gunna.

Now it was dark, and Daryl was boiling stream water in the cup from his sack – to make it potable, she supposed. She had watched him in silence for over half an hour, thinking about everything and nothing, and when the question rose in her she hadn’t kept it back.

“Who was who?” But he knew. She saw it at once.

“The man in black. On the hill. He spoke to you. Called you _gunslinger_.” She cocked her head and gave him a thin smile, a look that said _See? You didn’t fool me for a second._ “So he knew you. Don’t even try to say you don’t know him. Who was he?”

Daryl gazed at her in silence for a moment. Then he turned his attention back to the fire, the cup where it perched on its little bed of coals. It was steaming, though not yet bubbling.

“You didn’t say you were leavin’ me anywhere.” No, she wasn’t going to let this be. She wasn’t going to let _anything_ be. Not anymore. “You said you were takin’ me. So I’m comin’ with you. So alright, there’s things you gotta tell me. At least some things.”

“Like what?”

Her peace didn’t preclude impatience, and she felt it now. No hatred for him – one might as well, she thought, feel hatred for a storm or a drought. Not that either was blameless, but that to place blame at all was useless. But he had a _choice_ in how open he was with her, and the choices he had hitherto been making in that regard were no longer acceptable to her.

Not that they had ever been.

“Like _who you are,_ ” she said, letting her voice rise and sharpen. “Like what you’re really doin’. Where you’re really goin’. Where you really come from. Like what this is all really about. Like what my family _died_ for.” She pointed a slightly accusing finger at the gunbelts crossed over his hips, and at the enormous guns – all sandalwood and steel. “Like what _those_ are if you ain’t a gunslinger.”

“How you know what a gunslinger even _is?_ ” He shot the question back at her like parrying a blow, and he did so with such speed and equal intensity that for a second or two she stopped, reeling a little. He had been so stubbornly quiet and so unwilling to engage with her in any way that she had assumed no questions from him would be forthcoming.

_Did you even want me to come for you?_

“Huh? You’re a fuckin’ _farm girl_. You talked about your da’s _books._ You got any idea when I last _saw_ a book? And you can _read_ , you get what that means? You’re askin’ me who _I_ am? Girl, who the fuck’re _you?”_

He wasn’t letting up. He was leaning closer, and when the firelight caught his eyes she saw something there she hadn’t before. Perhaps she mistook it, perhaps it was a trick of the light, or perhaps she was just _wrong_. But she didn’t think so.

He was afraid of her.

And, for reasons she couldn’t begin to understand – reasons that didn’t even seem to come from her but instead to originate from whatever source birthed that same strange love – she pitied him.

No. No, not pity. Pity was the wrong word. But there was pain in him, wide and cracked and devoid of life as the deep of the desert. She did not enjoy the sight of it. Not even the glimpse of it, which was all she had.

“I’m Beth,” she said softly. She didn’t know what else to say. “Just… I’m just Beth.”

He looked at her for a moment more, and something almost pleading crossed his features, there and gone like a gust of wind. He was still close to her – very close. Part of her wanted to lean back, to give way before him, because there was force with the pain. Steel, the same as the cold blue-gray of his guns. And jagged edges. Things that could cut.

She didn’t lean. She held her ground and refused to budge from it – and another one of those unexplainable waves passed over her, the sensation of finding a memory that wasn’t her own, only it _was._ Her words. His face. She was almost dizzy with it, almost _did_ fall backward then.

_I remember when that little girl came outta the barn. After my mom. You were like me._

_And now God forbid you ever let anybody get too close._

She felt it pass from her to him, felt it begin to wind itself around them. Abruptly panic fluttered in her; it hadn’t been like this before. It hadn’t been so _strong_. It was pulling them tighter together, binding them like ropes, and when they touched—

He blinked and it was gone. Moving in unison they looked down, away, at anything but each other, and Daryl sat back, the familiar mulish stubbornness falling like a curtain over his face. Beth felt something sink in her. Whatever had just happened, whatever it meant… It had been a break through which she might have reached him. _Something._ If she had known how to use it, how to find a door through which she could walk…

She sighed. None of this was making any sense. She was tired. She had spent so much of the last two days asleep, and still she was so tired.

She had just begun to clear a place on the ground where she could curl up without being troubled by twigs or pebbles when Daryl spoke.

“He ain’t a man. Least not anymore.”

She froze in the act of sweeping a few small stones away and looked up. His gaze was still fixed on the fire and he didn’t seem to have moved at all – or so a casual observer might have thought. But she saw. She couldn’t not see. He had laid his crossbow at his side within easy reach, and his hand was closer to it now. Not touching it, not quite, but she believed that in the time it took to draw half a breath he could have it up, aimed, ready to let a bolt fly.

“Who is he?” she whispered.

“He goes by a lotta names.” Daryl paused and closed his eyes. Not fear now but something deeper, older, beyond any simple name. “I know him as Walter.”

Somewhere in the night – distant but clear and sharp as a bolt loosed from his bow – an animal screamed.

“He knows you.”

Daryl nodded.

“How?”

His eyes opened again – a flick, quicker than she could see. They were simply closed and then not anymore. _He’s fast,_ she thought. _He can be so fast when he has to be. Every part of him. With everything. He’s been made that way._

“I’ll tell you some things,” he said. “Not everythin’. Don’t push. Mind me, I beg ya.”

She could indeed have pushed. But looking at him now, deep instinct told her not to do so. Not to be satisfied, perhaps, but to be patient with him. That it might not be so much refusal to speak to her of these things as it was simple inability to talk about them at all. He had many words, many strange ones. But here, it might be, the words were lacking.

“Been trackin’ me. For a long time. Years, maybe.”

“You don’t know?”

He shook his head.

“What does he want?”

He hesitated, his gaze moving over her face – and shook his head again. After a few seconds she decided she was willing to let it go. There were other points at which she could attack.

She didn’t like that word, used that way with him. She didn’t want to attack him. Not anymore.

“He said things. _Hile._ He called me your _dan-tete._ I never heard those words. What are they?”

He looked slightly surprised. The water was boiling and the sudden chuckling sound of it distracted him. He wrapped his hand in his bandanna and lifted the cup from the coals, set it down and rummaged in his gunna. “You don’t know ‘em?”

“No. I mean…” She rolled a shoulder. “Some things were in Daddy’s books. But not other things. And some of it I probably just never saw. He was alright with me lookin’ at a few of ‘em, but others he kept close. I had to sneak.” She smiled, sudden and unbidden, and it was a pained smile and accordingly painful.

He huffed a laugh as he produced a small bundle of dry leaves, pulled a pinch of them loose from the thin leather thong that bound them together and began to grind them into powder between his fingers and thumb. The powder went into the cup.

“Kinda not surprised.” He picked up a twig and stirred the water. He didn’t _want_ to be telling her any of this, she was still certain of that. But she also sensed that maybe he _needed_ to tell someone. Even if he didn’t know it himself. “They’re words no one uses out here. From far away. Long time ago.” His mouth twitched in something that might have been a smile. “World’s moved on since then.”

“But what are they?” Now that she had him talking she wanted to maintain the momentum. “What do they mean?”

“Hile’s a greetin’. Old one.” He looked up from the cup. “You ever hear of a place called Gilead? In New Canaan?”

Beth nodded. She had. Only a few passing references, but she remembered. It had seemed to her like a fairy story, a tale for children. A rich land, bright, mythical. A place that had existed at its height before the world moved on. “It’s real?”

“Was. Gone now.”

An idea leaped in her mind. “You come from there?”

“No.” He spoke sharply, not out of irritation – so she thought – but more a need to prevent her from entertaining the possibility even for an instant. “No, I never even seen the place. But those words…”

“They used ‘em there.”

He nodded. “Called it the High Speech.”

She repeated that silently, her lips moving, feeling it on her tongue. It felt talismanic. A name of power. For a few seconds the fire seemed brighter. “So how do you know ‘em?”

“My father taught me.”

“How’d _he_ know ‘em?”

Daryl lifted a hand. Again, she saw no anger, no irritation. But he was closing off again. Pulling away from her. All at once he looked very tired, as if it had cost him something to tell her even this much. “Stop.”

He still hadn’t told her what _dan-tete_ meant. It burned in her. If he had neglected to tell her, it had been no accident.

But she would leave it. For the moment.

She shifted, folding one leg under her and watching him. He had tossed the twig away and was lifting the cup, still wrapped in the bandanna, and blowing on it to cool its contents. He took a cautious sip and briefly his eyes slipped closed.

“What is that?” That seemed a safe enough question, and he didn’t hesitate before answering her.

“Tea.”

She knew tea. They had made it from dried herbs at the farm – lemongrass, rosemary, sage. But she didn’t recognize these leaves. “What kind?”

He appeared faintly amused. “Always questions with you.” He took another sip and passed the cup over. “Careful. ‘s hot.”

She shot him a look – _I’m not an idiot –_ and lifted the cup to her lips. The scent was sharp but not unpleasant, and it was somehow a clean smell. She drank – cautious as he had been – and though it was nearly hot enough to burn the tip of her tongue it went smoothly down her throat, its taste mellow and almost sweet. She felt it settle in her belly, warm, and immediately a feeling of calm came over her that had nothing to do with the weary peace she had found. Perhaps it was merely the fragrance. Perhaps it was more.

She handed the cup back. “It’s good.”

“I know,” he said, and to her surprise he sounded almost teasing. It seemed to surprise him as well, because he stared at her for a second or two and turned his head away a little hastily. Strange. But she would let that go as well. The effects of the tea possibly made it easier to do so.

She sat in that calm for a short time, and he did the same. Whatever tension had strung itself in the air between them was unwinding itself. What was left in its place wasn’t comfortable, not exactly, but it was closer to it than not. Tomorrow, maybe, she would feel her grief again. She thought she might – that it might come and go in waves, in storms, suddenly and without warning, but for now she would use this time however she could. To rest. To think clearly.

“Two more questions, I beg,” she said quietly. Again, it was probably the tea that made it easier for her to say this, that made it possible for her to dare. If he did get angry now, if he spoke harshly to her, she thought she could bear up under it.

But he only looked at her for a moment, the cup held between his hands – then handed it back to her and nodded. “I don’t say I’ll answer. But ask, do it please ya.”

She didn’t drink, only held the cup beneath her nose and breathed in its soothing smell. “Where’re you really goin’? What’re you after?”

_What is the path set for you?_

His expression turned thoughtful. No reflexive denial, she noted. He was genuinely considering an answer, and that was promising. At last he sat forward, his shoulders hunched, and picked up a stick to prod the fire.

“I’m lookin’ for my brother.”

His brother. She felt an entire world concealed in those two words, books’ worth of history, things he not only refused to say but very likely would never find a _way_ to say. She wouldn’t fault him for that. She was beginning to truly grasp how difficult it was for him to tell her anything at all.

If, in time, he told her more about it, she would count that as a compliment. For now she would ponder it alone.

“What’s your other?’

She took a breath – even through her calm she realized this might genuinely be risky – and once more she pointed to the guns at his hips. “Are you or are you not a gunslinger? Tell me true.” She bit her bottom lip. She needed him to say. She couldn’t have explained why, not to herself or to anyone else, but she needed to know. “Tell me. I beg ya.”

He stared into the fire, and after the span of a few breaths she realized he wasn’t blinking. Just staring, motionless, as if she had spoken the words of some spell that turned him to stone. This was a question, this might be The Question, and suddenly she was sorry she asked it. She wanted to take it back. It was hurting him, and though she didn’t care to spare him all pain – not after the farm – for some reason she wished she could have spared him this.

But it was asked. It could not be unasked.

Slowly, very slowly, he shook his head and looked at her. He had seemed to be stone, and his eyes _were_ like stone – no longer the steel of his guns but something harder, older, old as the world.

“No.”

He wasn’t lying. She knew it at once. She had asked for truth and he had given it to her.

But it was not true. Or, as truths went, it was not whole.

“I say thankya,” she murmured.

They sat in silence and everything around them eased. They shared the last of the tea, and Daryl gathered the coals together in the center of the fire ring to give them what warmth they could for the rest of the night. It was a warmer night, and Beth thought she would sleep well enough with no cover, but Daryl handed her his poncho without comment, and she took it from him. To refuse it, she thought, wouldn’t be right.

In so many tiny ways, he was caring for her. It was beyond strange.

For the first time, she thought _He knows me too,_ and she felt no doubt.

She lay down on her back. Daryl was still sitting, his knees drawn against his chest, watching the coals as they glared and crackled. She looked away from him, up at the countless brilliant stars. To her right one flew across the sky, quick as one of his bolts, and disappeared into the darkness. An old rhyme from her childhood came to her, said to her by both her mother and Maggie when they sat on the porch in the evenings, spotting what few constellations they knew. Beth never had trouble finding them. To her, they were always so clear.

Her lips moved, shaping the words.

_Bird and bear and hare and fish, give my love his fondest wish._

They had made a song of it. No other words, but something they had woven into a series of harmonies, each of them taking a part, sending it up into the sky as if they were truly begging the favor of those stars. Some unknown love, if it was not Daddy, if it was not Shawn. Some unknown wish.

Very softly, she began to sing the part that had always been hers, and then she began to cry, the poncho wrapped around her shoulders. Not hard. It didn’t even shake her voice. It flowed from her like a stream, and as it came it calmed her even more.

_I made it._

That was not a curse. It might be no blessing, but it was something with which she could live.

As she sang, Daryl said nothing to her, but she could feel him listening. And when she closed her eyes, letting the last of the song die away, she could feel his gaze.

~

_I’m lookin’ for my brother._

What in _all_ the worlds had made him say that?

Daryl watched Beth until he was sure she slept, then watched her for a while longer. Studying her. Every time he thought he was close to untangling her and what she meant, another knot tangled itself into existence. Saying any of what he had beggared belief, at least to some degree, but saying _that_ … For twenty years he had kept that close. He asked people when the asking seemed as if it might be useful. Tracking was a complex process and required every tool available, every piece of information. But even in asking he revealed as little as possible.

_Hard man. Smile like a sneer. Has a way about him, you’d know if you saw._

_Missin’ a hand._

Nine times in twenty years his questions had yielded answers that he could grab onto, use to drag himself a little further. Nine times, nine flashes of illumination that punctuated long, horrible periods of utter darkness. Nine times he had been cursed with hope. The ninth had given him a name and a direction, after so many years wandering in circles. For the first time he was moving in a straight line.

Apparently that had caught and held someone’s attention. Apparently that wasn’t all it had done.

His father’s voice, for once calm in a way that didn’t conceal rage like gunfire. Calm in a way that accompanied deep thought – and deeper sadness. _World ain’t just movin’ on, boys. World’s gettin’_ thin _. Beams’re breakin’. The walls between everythin’ are startin’ to show holes._ His eyes, blue, the fearful heart of a flame. _This is your path. One’a you, anyway. These guns. Your birthright. You’ll do what I couldn’t, because you must._

_You think I’m cruel? Boys, I’m a fuckin’ wet nurse compared to what’s waitin’ for you out there. You may hate me, but in the end you’ll thank me for what I do to you. In the end you’ll see. Our stories don’t get happy endings. Gunslingers don’t die in their fuckin’ beds._

_By all the gods that are and ever were, by my eye and my mind and my heart, by the faces of all my fathers… When you die, you’ll die on the steps of the Tower._

Daryl shuddered. It was hard and sudden, like a quake in his core – not fear alone but everything at once, every emotion he had ever felt or ever could feel. Fear, yes, but grief heavy enough to crush the heart, a rush of terrible joy – and need. Need that burned in his blood, molten steel in the marrow of his bones.

He looked back at Beth lying there in the last light of the fire, her youth returned in her sleep, and for a moment he saw her silhouetted in flame, standing beside him, her hand raised and a single finger up in defiance borne of every final fragment of will.

_That is how it will end,_ he thought, and trembled again and had to look away.

_Follow the path set for you, gunslinger. Remember the face of your father. Remember it very well._

“No,” he breathed. And in his mind, Walter o'Dim laughed.

_Then seek your brother, you fool. It will come to the same in the end. Seek your brother and be damned._

_All roads lead to the Tower._


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little downtime for our heroes before things go to shit again. As always, I say thankya for reading, especially since this thing shows _no_ signs of stopping anytime soon.

 

2

 

Everything was quiet when Beth woke.

It was an eerie kind of quiet, as if in the gray nowhere-time before dawn the world had slipped into a period fully between darkness and light. Not even the wind moving across the open land.

In that quiet she sat up, shrugging off the poncho, blinking and rubbing at her eyes with one palm like a child. The fire had burned down to a blackened circle. Daryl was curled beside it, head pillowed on his arm and apparently still asleep. He seemed younger like this, the lines of his face smoothed out and the ever-present tension he carried around his eyes and his mouth eased. She had no idea how old he was but she thought he might be anywhere between his mid-thirties and late forties. If she had to make a guess she would have placed him on the lesser end of that range, but really it was difficult to be sure. Whatever he had been through before he came to the farm, wherever his wandering had taken him, one thing it had clearly taken was a toll.

A hefty one.

She watched him a moment longer, searching for any sign that he was aware of her and was perhaps only shamming – though why he would do such a thing, she wasn’t sure – but seeing none she stretched until her back and neck popped and got slowly to her feet.

She wasn’t exactly accustomed to sleeping on the ground. Since her infancy there had been beds – maybe not luxurious but soft enough – and before all this she would have expected a difficult time in learning to do this, at least without pain. But it had come surprisingly easy to her.

Almost as it was something she _had_ done before. Many times.

She tilted her head back, inhaling the cool air, then looked at Daryl one last time. He hadn’t moved. The rhythm and depth of his breathing didn’t seem to have changed. All at once she considered waking him anyway, or waiting until he woke on his own. She wanted to do this very badly, but she wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea of doing it alone and unarmed. Once she would have assumed her own safety, but already the world itself had taught her better.

There were his guns. His bow. In his boot, she had spotted the handle of a knife. If she tried to take any of these, she _knew_ he would be awake in mere fragments of a second, and he might be perfectly capable of breaking her arm before either she or _he_ knew what was happening. He wasn’t alive – and with a face as worn as that – without reason.

She bit her lip. Modesty shouldn’t worry her. At least not to a certain point. Not if he and she were going to be traveling together, for however long that ended up being. For better or worse, they were probably going to get to know each other very well; she had enough imagination to be sure that a world as vast as this one appeared to be could throw people together as tightly as if they occupied a single tiny room.

But she couldn’t. Not this. Not yet. He had made no unseemly move toward her, and in fact he hadn’t showed any of that kind of interest in her at all. No indication that he regarded her as anything other than a girl who had attached herself to the heel of his boots. But she couldn’t.

The stream was close. Barely yards away. She would be careful and quiet, and she would be done before he was up.

She hesitated, then picked up the poncho and headed toward the lip of the little gully.

The light was brightening, warming, and as she slid down the loose earth the idea of bathing like this was more and more appealing. It was just a stream, barely deep enough to come halfway up her calves, but the water was clear, and she was freshly aware of how _filthy_ she was. Sweat and ashes and the dust of the road, but also the smoke and soot of the fire, smears of old manure here and there on her jeans, her hair a complete nightmare of tangles. She wasn’t vain, never had been, and in truth she didn’t care what she looked like now – especially not when there was only Daryl to see her. But God, she would _feel_ so much better.

If she could even wash her _hair._ Her clothes. If she could do that much.

The stream was nothing but water flowing over a rocky bed – no weeds, no fish that she could see – and that suited her just fine. She laid down the poncho and reached up to pull free the band that held back her hair. Her shirt and camisole followed, and when she tossed them aside, yanked off her boots, and pushed her jeans down her hips…

She should perhaps have felt more self-conscious than she did. But no. There was something almost… _freeing_ about it, and it wasn’t just the freedom that came with being rid of clothes that had frankly become offensive.

She was stripping herself of something else.

She stood for a few seconds, her bare feet on the water-smoothed rocks, her skin goose-pimpling in the breeze that was finally rising. _Free,_ she kept thinking. _Free._

Then she remembered what she was free _of_ , and grief crashed into her, ripping through her and dragging physical pain in its wake. It was difficult to breathe. She took a stumbling step forward, another, and made it into the stream, moving into its center and dropping into a crouch. She hardly noticed the initial shock of the cold. She wrapped her arms around her knees, lowered her head into them, and tried to muffle her sobs as best she could.

She didn’t fight it. She let it come. Keeping it back, trying to be _stoic –_ as if it mattered… It wouldn’t help. It would only make bad worse. Better that it flow out of her.

Clean her. Like flushing out a wound. That had to be done before it could begin to heal.

After a while the tears released her. Her face was sticky, hot, her eyes swollen, but she felt better. The water was cool against her thighs, soothing. But she looked up at the sky and felt an edge of trepidation; the sun was well and truly rising now, and Daryl would soon be awake – if he wasn’t already – and wondering where she had gone.

With his poncho.

She smiled a little at that, leaned forward and began to wash.

In the end she wasn’t as thorough as she would have preferred – not just because of time but because all she had was the water itself. She made do with little handfuls of sand for scrubbing, then went back for her clothes and beat them with rocks until they rinsed mostly clear. There were stains she was sure she would never get off – but again, it wasn’t as if it mattered.

That done, she spread them out in the sun to do what drying they could before she had to dress, and sat down on the poncho to dry in the breeze. The peace she had felt the night before was returning, and now she recognized it for what it was: calm between storms.

There would be another.

Well, she would deal with it when it came.

Finally, deciding she couldn’t wait any longer, she rose and pulled her clothes back on. They were still damp, and she despaired of ever working the more stubborn snarls out of her hair, but it would do. She shouldered the poncho and made her way back up the side of the gully.

Daryl was waiting for her.

She halted just before she reached the top, staring up at him. He was leaning against the branchless trunk of a long-dead tree, his crossbow over his shoulder, smoking. He looked placidly back at her and tapped ash onto the ground.

“Done?”

Struck silent, she nodded. She wasn’t sure of the point of view his angle would give him. How far he could see from there. Had he—

He returned her nod, seeming satisfied with something, and pushed away from the tree, slipping the cigarette between his lips as he turned. “Breakfast,” he said over his shoulder, the word flat and clipped. “We gotta go.”

She made to follow him. But by the tree she paused and looked back over the edge toward the stream.

Yes.

Utterly at a loss, she walked back to the camp.

~

Daryl hadn’t watched her.

But he had been awake when she left.

He had woken almost the second she did, sensing it – the almost imperceptible rhythm of her, her breathing, the shifting of her body. This was an instinct honed through years of violent training and decades more of constant, potentially lethal tests. Something near him had changed; he would be awake and aware of it or he might die. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t altered his own breathing, but he felt her, and he heard her when she left. And guessed where she was going.

He could have been sharp with her. Down there, naked, unarmed and distracted – vulnerable in every possible respect. His own father would have been a great deal more than sharp. Daryl would have received a bloody nose for that kind of carelessness. If he was _lucky_ that would have been all.

But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Not now. And anyway, he had been there. She _hadn’t_ been vulnerable.

She was reordering everything. Reorganizing. He wasn’t sure he liked it.

He wasn’t sure it would be fair to say he _disliked_ it.

They ate, and he refilled the canteen with boiled stream water, tucked a few more of the sour little fruits in his sack. Then they moved on.

The ground they were covering was all land through which they had already passed, but on foot – and this long removed from that one terrible hour – it looked different. Still dry, still flat, still mostly featureless but for the rocks, and the hills still sat on the horizon, subtly changing their colors as the sun traveled overhead. He was beginning to suspect they might not be hills but low mountains – he knew there would be mountains along the way he had set, though he didn’t know when he would reach them. Low mountains, and hopefully more water. Plants, things they could eat. Fresh meat, even. Past the spot where they made camp and the end of the kinder land they hadn’t seen anything beyond flies and lumbering beetles, but there was something about the quality of the soil and the dust that puffed across the road that made him skeptical about the quality – the _safety_ – of anything they might reasonably hunt.

They still weren’t all that far from the farm, but he had learned from unpleasant experience that things changed quickly. Whatever long forgotten disaster had done this – poisoned water, earth, plants and animals – it hadn’t been evenly distributed. But where it hit, it hit hard. And it lingered.

He tried not to breathe too deeply.

They didn’t speak to each other as they walked, and the silence wasn’t uncomfortable. Beth seemed thoughtful, and Daryl supposed she had every reason to be. Before the slow mutants and the fire he might have expected her to be talkative to the point of annoyance, but even if that would once have been true…

Yet she had questions. He didn’t think she would just leave them, not forever. Sooner or later he would have to come up with answers, or find a way to make her drop them for good. And he wasn’t inclined to do the latter of those things. He had a feeling it would involve a level of harshness he would find less pleasant even than giving her some version of the answers she wanted.

She knew. Like Hershel, she knew things she shouldn’t know. She knew what she _thought_ he was. She knew the significance of the guns – had known it on sight. She knew the city of Gilead and the barony of New Canaan – places almost no one had heard of, not since the world moved on. Gilead and New Canaan, and their fall to treason and revolution in the name of _freedom._ Revolution at the bloody hand of John Farson, the _Good Man…_ And Daryl’s father had laughed when he told that part. When he said that name.

_The Good Man. Thief and liar, murderer of children, old men and women. Aye, the Good Man. Had a talent for justification and a tongue made of quicksilver. Lovely, shinin’, always flowin’ where the flowin’ was best._

_Poison. That more’n anythin’ else._

And the Man in Black.

That part, and the part he had played, he still didn’t completely know. If she asked him – if she knew about Farson, if she knew that much – he didn’t know how he would answer. Tell her the truth, perhaps.

A novel idea.

But why did she _know?_

 _She always knew more than she should,_ he thought. It came to him dreamily, yet clear. He had fallen slightly behind her and she didn’t appear to have noticed. He was studying her shoulders, her back, her gait. The swing of her arms. The braid she had somehow worked back into her hair. He couldn’t help it – had hung back to look at her without entirely meaning to. _She always knew. Looked and knew. Saw too much. Used it to prod and pry, gentle but absolutely merciless._

_Merciless._

The sun rose high and the day grew hotter. The hills were still some distance away.

At last he touched her shoulder and stopped her. She turned and he saw he had been smart to do so – she was sweating and a little flushed, her eyes just a touch too bright. Why hadn’t she said something?

Then again, he should probably have known.

“Sun’s gettin’ to be too much.” He sighed. “What I wouldn’t give for a decent hat.”

Beth looked bemused. “Why don’t you have one?”

“Lost it,” he said shortly. She waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. “Was hopin’ to pick one up at your da’s place, but. Well.” Suddenly he felt awkward, but he could see no sign of pain or offense on her face, so he let it go.

“What should we do?”

He shaded his eyes and looked. About twenty yards off the road was one of those small rises that appeared to be formed from piles of rocks and years of blowing dust. There was shade in its lee, and he nodded toward it.

Barely enough for two people, but it would do.

“We’ll rest a while. Again mid-afternoon.”

She nodded and followed him.

It was much cooler under the rock, as they crowded in together – pressed shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip. This should have occurred to him, he thought again. He had known the farm was dangerous, had even been ready to leave quickly if needed, but he had forgotten some basic details, and this was one of them. And details – this was something else the world had taught him over and over but apparently not well enough – could be the points on which everything else turned. Or wobbled and fell over.

He was accustomed to the heat, to battering degrees of sun. She wasn’t. Sunstroke out here, miles from everything, was all she needed. All _he_ needed.

It would have made so much more sense to leave her at the farm.

_I see you’ve found your dan-tete._

Leaving her had never been an option. Of all the things he hadn’t considered, that had been the furthest off the board. Only now, when it was far too late, was he thinking of it at all.

His heart in his enemy’s pocket.

Did this count?

Beth leaned against him a little, sighing. He stiffened, but let her do it. Touch was another strange thing – and hers in particular. He wasn’t used to being touched in any way except the touch that accompanied violence. He tended to dislike it in any context. But if she sensed that, she didn’t care, and anyway…

Since he met her he had touched her a great deal. Always for reasons of pure practicality, even necessity… But still.

“So how _did_ you lose your hat?”

“Cat,” he said immediately.

“Cat?” She sounded faintly incredulous. Also a bit amused.

“Cat.”

“Any special kind of cat?’

“Big one.” He paused, and gave her something that was almost a smile. “Outside Jael. You know the wildcats? Where it gets rockier? You ever seen one?”

“Oh. Them.” She looked away, fingering a worn place on the hem of one leg of her jeans. She had done that before, he remembered. On the porch, that last evening. “Yeah. They used to come as far as the farm. Was one reason why we had the shotgun.” Something shifted in her voice; she didn’t sound like she was about to cry, but it wavered and then _hardened_ , and again he thought of how she had looked when they returned to the ashes. How all at once she had seemed years older.

“Had a run-in with one.” He pointed to the side of his head, still with that almost-smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Dodged it. Got the hat. By the time I took down the cat the thing was ripped to fuckin’ shreds.” He leaned his head back against the rock, which was cool. It felt good. “I really liked that hat.”

“Could find another one.” She looked back at him, and whatever had passed over her appeared to be gone.

“Where?”

She shrugged. “Somewhere.”

“You talkin’ like there _is_ somewhere.”

She breathed a soft laugh – not exactly happy, but not as thin as it might have been. “Gotta be. Right?”

“Maybe.” He was quiet a moment. “Don’t help you none.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“You won’t be. Sun out here’s a bitch. Ain’t gettin’ no better. Ever had sunstroke?”

“Same sun as back home,” she pointed out, and the strange weak-hardness returned. It was her grieving, he realized. Coming in waves, and she was riding it. Letting it carry her. Letting it pass and moving on with the day.

She was strong. Not some pampered girl from a farm that had been doing better than almost any place he had ever been, but _strong._ Maybe stronger than he could know.

Maybe he would find out, in time.

“Ain’t the same.” He thought of the hardpan. He thought of the dry hills before that, treeless hills lower and older than the ones from which he had come, where the grass barely held the soil in place and dust-storms blew up almost every afternoon, pounding grit into everywhere. He thought of a valley of smooth white stones, hot as an oven and impassible in the day. He thought of firescars that were all that remained of immense forests, countless skeletal trees lifting bone-fingers to a sky so hot and bright all the blue had been bleached out of it.

He thought of great expanses of sand melted into glass. Blinding in the daylight. A clear, calm ocean at night that reflected the moon and the stars with perfect clarity, mirroring the world.

She didn’t know these things. What would she say if she saw them? What would she say when she saw whatever lay ahead?

“Ain’t the same,” he repeated, and left it at that.

But he wasn’t so sure.

“Can’t live under here,” she said. She leaned back too, her arm pressed against his. The slight breeze had dried her sweat and her skin was almost as cool as the rock. “Guessin’ we can’t travel at night.”

“Not a good idea.” He didn’t think he had to go into why. She had seen some of why already. He lifted his hips just a bit and groped for his back pocket, pulling free his bandanna and handing it to her.

She looked at it quizzically. Didn’t take it. He tapped her arm with it and pushed it closer. “You wanna walk, you cover your head.”

She plucked it out of his hand and examined it, looked back up at him. He thought she might argue, but instead she folded it into a triangle and laid it over her head, knotting the ends beneath her chin. She arched a brow.

He laughed. He couldn’t help it. It burst out of him, quick and sharp – not loud, but it was louder than he had laughed in a while. “You look like a fuckin’ grandma.”

Beth rolled her eyes and swatted at his arm, but she didn’t remove the thing. And something between them…

He wasn’t sure. Again it was something familiar, insistently so, but this time it didn’t come with that feeling of darkness on its heels – that sense of something twisting, mutating, winding its way through holes and gaps and channels that shouldn’t be there. The sense of being _pierced_ somehow, invaded by something that both was and was not him.

This was easy. Warm. He liked being with her, he realized. It was as simple as that. Behind them was horror and death, and ahead of them might be the same. Probably _was_ the same. But there was this moment, this odd little moment, which felt removed from it.

He liked being with her. And he hadn’t left her behind because he hadn’t _wanted_ to.

She, too, was a trap.

He cleared his throat and rummaged in his gunna, pulling out the canteen and one of the little bits of fruit and handing both to her. “Eat. Drink. Then we move.”

“Yes, Mr. Dixon,” she muttered, and it was like taking a bolt of lightning to the ass. It wasn’t just the _feeling_ of it but the _light_ – a literal flash in his vision. This, too, was different from everything before it. Not like being invaded but as if someone had caught him dozing at some crucial time and cuffed him in the head. _You. Up. Pay attention._

He didn’t exactly _jump_ — But it was a near thing.

_Just drink lotsa water._

He never said that.

_Holes in the world, boys. Beams’re breakin’._

She was looking strangely at him. She had noticed. He cleared his throat again and shook himself. No sense trying to explain it away. It would just call more attention to it. He waved a hand at the canteen.

“Gonna drink, or not?”

“Alright,” she said, softer this time. Almost placating. He hated it. “Alright.”

~

They walked until sundown. Then they stopped.

Beth was tired and not in especially good spirits. They hadn’t spoken more than five words to each other since that first mid-day rest, and in the end that had been fine. She had begun to sink into herself well into the afternoon, everything she felt rising around her in another one of those threatening storms. She hadn’t wanted to stop it, but it also hadn’t been exactly convenient to do what she would most have liked, which was to curl up in the shadow of another stone and cry until she didn’t have the strength to cry anymore.

So she kept it in, just enough. The tears came anyway, rolling down her cheeks, and she was angry at them – angry because they hadn’t seen another stream all day and she couldn’t spare the water, angry that she couldn’t control it if she wanted to, and most of all, angry that she was doing it as she walked beside Daryl. That he could see. She shouldn’t care what he thought, shouldn’t give a _shit_ about that, considering… But she wasn’t weak. She wasn’t going to have him thinking she was.

But if he did see, he said nothing.

They made camp in silence. She fetched wood. They ate more jerky and more of the fruit, and she could already tell she would be desperately sick of both in another day. Without being asked he made another cup of the tea, and this time gave it all to her. She wasn’t sure it was a favor. Maybe it was. Maybe it was simply, for him, what needed doing.

As before, she took the poncho when he offered and wrapped herself in it and lay down. It was another clear night – cloudy days weren’t exactly common at the farm, but she had seen no clouds at all since they left the cattle.

Surely they couldn’t have come far enough for that much of a difference.

But space felt odd here. Distance. More than once on the road she had seen things she was sure were still over a mile away, only to reach them no more than five minutes later. Other things had looked close, and they had walked for the better part of an hour before they passed them.

 _Nothing is the right shape,_ she thought, closing her eyes, and then – without having any idea where it came from or what it meant – _The beams are breaking._

She shuddered.

“We’ll reach the hills tomorrow,” Daryl said quietly. And said nothing else. He didn’t sound as though he was even really speaking to her.

 _The hills._ Like the High Speech, the word felt special. Powerful. More than a descriptive place name. It was a place they were going _to._

 _But now you are in the liminal,_ whispered a voice – not Daryl’s, not her own, not that of her father or mother or Maggie or Shawn. No one she knew – she thought. _Now you are in the in-between. Breathe. Take all the breath you can._

_The water runs faster now. Soon come the rapids._

~

The next morning, she found a stick of charcoal and began to write in her journal.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No notes in particular except, as usual, thanks for reading this and I continue to be pleasantly surprised when people do. <3
> 
>  
> 
> _Soon come the rapids._

 

 

3

 

They did indeed reach the hills the next day – late in the morning. They were indeed what Daryl had started to believe: not hills at all but low mountains, old mountains, worn down by millennia of wind and rain and the moving-on of the world. As the road began to rise into them, winding and turning, trees began to rise as well – first small and stunted but taller and taller as they went. Pines, their bark speckled brown and white and their needles long and a deep, soothing green. There was little green aside from that, as they continued into what was truly becoming a forest, for the needles lay thick on the ground and didn’t allow more than a few low shrubs and scatters of moss. But there was shade, and if the going was harder the further they climbed, the relief from the sun seemed like a fair trade.

If they had known it would be the last sun they would see for two days, they might have felt otherwise.

~

The way was steep, steeper than Daryl had expected even after what they were actually dealing with became clear. He didn’t struggle – though he was hoping more and more that they would stumble on a source of water – but he worried Beth might. But she didn’t, or if she did she didn’t let it show. She kept pace with him, her rougher breathing the only sign that she was tiring, her wide-eyed looks around the only indication that she was taken at all with the change in their surroundings. Daryl had seen the land around and beyond Jael, and knew that while she had seen trees, she had almost certainly never seen a forest.

She didn’t ask to rest – she actually gave him trouble when he decided to do so, insisting that she could make it a little further, maybe until they found a brook or a spring. He practically had to take her by the shoulders and push her down onto a low, mossy stone. She gave in, but he could feel her annoyance.

What exactly was she trying to prove?

But of course he knew.

He crouched beside her and handed her the canteen. His attention was only partially on her; he was doing what he had done since the road began to rise, which was see everything he could see and listen for everything he could hear. Listen for the trickle of water – of which there was none – and the rustle of underbrush – such as there was. Wind in the trees. The cries of any birds. They had heard a few rough squawks, but they had sounded distant, and neither of them had been able to spot anything.

The forest was clearly not dead. But there was something about it. Something disquieting.

He had hoped they might linger a while, if there were things here that made lingering possible. But now he wasn’t so set on the idea.

“Look.” Beth touched his arm and snapped his focus back to her. Her face was lifted to the sky and she was pointing, and a faint, unselfconscious smile was tugging at her mouth. She had smiled now and then since the farm, but not like this.

This was better.

He followed her gaze, and there, through a break in the trees, wheeled a large bird, gliding on the thermals. It was high above them, but Daryl could still make out its wickedly curved beak, its pale brown and red coloring.

“’s a hawk,” he said.

Beth shot him a look. “I know what it is. We had ‘em back home. Used to take rabbits and mice outta the fields. Daddy was always happy to have ‘em around.”

“Yar,” he said. “They’re good things.” _Good things._ It went beyond the idea of a predator that benefited the people where it kept its nest. A hawk was fundamentally a _Good Thing_. He had never seen a mutated one, though that didn’t mean they didn’t exist. There was something noble about them, though also something cruel. They were simple, straightforward, as without guile as they were without pity.

His father had always loved hawks. Had never killed them. Wouldn’t suffer to see them killed. Daryl remembered being a small boy in one of the rare moments of kindness his father allowed him then, before things got bad. He and Merle on the edge of a cliff on a hunting trip, their father crouched behind them with a hand on each of their shoulders as they watched a hawk perched on a nearby branch finally sight its prey and dive. Below in a clear patch of ground they saw the talons sink into the flesh of the squirrel, the quick, ruthless kill, the flight back to the branch and the bloody meal that followed.

 _In Gilead we hunted with ‘em,_ his father said softly. _Hunted. Not trained. You can’t train a hawk, boys, unless he’s willin’ to be trained. You can’t friend one either, unless you’re a hawk yourself. So they said._

He had paused, and they watched for a while longer – the blood, the pink ruin of the flesh, the graceful, lethal curve of the thing’s beak and talons. Something in Daryl stirred, then. Heated and chilled at the same time. He was seeing his future, he thought – or one possible future. It was a fearful thing, no warmth or love in it, and he shrank away from it.

But another part of him was fascinated. Eager. Death. Death terrified – but death _enticed._

 _My teacher said somethin’ once,_ his father went on. His hand squeezed Daryl’s shoulder, as if this last thing was the thing he should retain most of all. _I never forgot it. I remember it very well._

_He said_

“The hawk is God’s gunslinger,” Daryl murmured, and when Beth looked sharply at him he didn’t notice.

~

It wasn’t quite noon when they came to the lake.

The road ran directly to it and then veered to the right, running along the wide, grassy bank. But the grass itself was beginning to eat the road, and in large patches it was difficult to see it at all. It hadn’t been traveled much for a long time, Daryl instantly noted. Something about this lake was a terminus. That wasn’t a comforting thing.

But the lake itself was beautiful, _big_ , oblong and calm and reflecting the clear blue sky like a mirror. Reeds grew along its bank and cattails nodded gently in the breeze. They were standing near one of its ends and it was narrower there. Across the water – perhaps two hundred yards away, give or take – was a much steeper rise than any they had yet seen. It stretched almost all the way down that side of the lake, grey and dotted with jagged outcroppings, everywhere else loose rocks and pebbles that looked as if they might easily slide.

Impassable. Unclimbable.

To their left, the ground sheared away into another rocky cliff, and a quick glance showed it to be perhaps a hundred feet or so to the bottom – no more, and maybe a little less, but also impassable, and nasty looking rocks waited below, part of an old, shallow streambed.

Directly in front of them was an ancient concrete dam. Across its top – worryingly narrow – and nestled against the cliff was what looked like a low bunker made of the same concrete. From its flat top protruded the ruins of a complex, web-like wire structure. Here and there loose cables dangled like vines.

 _So we go right, along the bank,_ Daryl thought, but neither of them moved. Daryl, for his part, was merely taking in as much of the place as he could, but when he looked back at Beth he saw her staring, her mouth slightly open, and he realized she had probably never seen anything like this. Not this much water in one place, anyway. It must look like unfathomable riches.

“If you’re done gapin’,” he said with faint amusement, “think we can get movin’ again?”

She turned to him, blinked as if she was coming out of a trance. “It’s just…” She waved a hand at it and said nothing else.

“You say true, I say thankya.” He laid a hand on the back of her shoulder and pushed gently. “C’mon. We can take a rest.”

The sun was directly overhead, and it was far too early to make camp, but a pause for an hour or so seemed advisable. But part of him, that narrow-eyed, watchful part, sharp and beaked and clawed – _the hawk_ – was wheeling. Searching. There was something here.

Something just wasn’t _right._

They stopped again on the grassy bank by the lip of the dam, and Daryl dropped into a crouch, pulling open his sack. He handed the canteen to Beth, along with another one of the hard little green things. She took it, though she made a face.

“Gettin’ pretty tired of these.”

“Be more tired of your teeth fallin’ out. Findin’ these was a dream come true.”

She cocked her head, already picking at the tough peel. She would eat it – he had insisted when they first did so, she would eat everything – but she didn’t appear to understand. “Teeth fallin’ out?”

Daryl glanced up in mid-rummage. “Ain’t never heard of that?” He answered his own question. “Guess you wouldn’t, you had everythin' you needed probably since you were born. Tell ya true, you can’t live on jerky. It’s food, yar, but you sicken all the same.”

“I like my teeth,” Beth replied with a small smile.

“Good things to have.”

He pulled a length of thin line from the sack along with a couple of twisted bits of wire. Beth sat down in the grass and watched him, bemused, then turned her attention to the dam, looking thoughtful as she chewed. “Never seen a dam this big.”

“Seen one, though?”

“Mhmm.” She dug a bit of peel from under one fingernail. “You saw the one at Jael?”

Daryl shook his head. He had seen nothing of the kind.

“Was outside town a ways. Would’ve missed it if you didn’t go the right way. There was a reservoir, served the town. Tiny, though. Fed by a spring in the hills. Every time we went there it was a little smaller.”

“Then Jael was gone.”

“And the spring.”

“World’s moved on.”

Beth nodded but said nothing. Daryl sat beside her and began to make a fishing line.

He had almost finished when Beth got up, stretched, and peered out at the water. “Think I might take a swim.”

 _A swim._ He looked up at her, sharp, halted in the act of manipulating one of the bits of wire into a hook. “You can swim?”

“Was a pond out past the fields. Sometimes we watered the cows there.” She gave him another faint smile – faint and a little sad. “Shawn threw me in when I was nine. Kinda didn’t have a choice.”

“Sure that’s a good idea?”

She cocked her head. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“We don’t know what’s _in_ there. Could have claws ‘n teeth ‘n a taste for meat.”

“You’re gonna fish,” she pointed out.

“That’s different.” But he actually felt slightly flustered – and irritated. He wasn’t used to being argued with, and she seemed perfectly comfortable with the process. Which made him want to cut it off at the knees, however unwise it might be. “Look, girl, you do whatever it please ya, but I ain’t draggin’ you out when somethin’ decides you’re dinner an’ drags you under.”

“Fine. Good.” But she made no move to undress, and her expression shifted. There was something uncomfortable in it now – and hesitant, as if she wanted to say something and wasn’t sure she could. Or should. Her discomfort bled into him, and it twisted rapidly into exasperation.

“You gonna paddle around in your clothes, then?”

She sighed and looked away, holding onto her arm with her opposite hand. She didn’t look younger, but she did look smaller, and under the exasperation he felt a swell of protectiveness that he didn’t entirely welcome.

“Look, you…” She took a breath and pushed ahead. “You were watchin’ me this mornin’? When I was in the stream?”

He frowned. “No. I mean… Keepin’ watch, sure. Wasn’t _watchin’_ you.”

“Alright.” She still had that look, between wavering and firm. She wanted the latter and was trying to shed the former. Trying desperately. He wanted to push her, wanted to very much, and at the same time he wasn’t certain he wanted to hear what she would say next.

“You…” With an effort, she finished the thought. “Are you gonna want somethin’?”

He blinked at her. Uncomprehending. “ _Want_ somethin’?”

“From me. Are you gonna want me to do somethin’ for you? For takin’ me along?” She rushed ahead before he could even begin to fumble for an answer, and steel crept into her voice. “’Cause I ain’t never… And I don’t wanna. I won’t. You can leave me behind but I won’t.”

Then he got it, completely, and he simply stared at her. It hadn’t occurred to him. It hadn’t occurred to him that it might occur to _her._ And she was standing there, still holding onto her arm, but the steel in her voice was now in her eyes, and he believed she meant it. Every word. Whatever vague idea she had of what _want something from me_ meant – and maybe it wasn’t so vague – she wasn’t going to do it. Whatever the consequences.

 _She’s not just strong,_ he thought. _By all the gods there ever were, she’s_ tough. _Shouldn’t be, but she is._

“I don’t want nothin’ from you,” he said slowly, meeting her gaze. “Swear it.” He got to his feet, the line wrapped around his hand and the hooks dangling. “Nothin’ like that, anyway. What I want is for you to keep up, alright? You wanna come along, you come along. Do your part. Do as I bid ya. But I don’t want… I don’t want _that._ ”

It was difficult, he realized, to even _think_ about _that._ When it came to her. It had never been a thing he especially wanted, never a thing he even really enjoyed, at least not the way he had it so far – rough, quick, somehow cold. Distant. And thinking about that, with her – thinking about someone _demanding_ that from her – it filled him with something that was almost a dim kind of horror.

She looked at him a moment more, then nodded, apparently satisfied. “Alright.” She turned away from him, but then glanced back, and that faint smile had returned. Everything in him relaxed very slightly. “But I don’t want you lookin’, all the same.”

“By the face of my father,” he said, and though it was flippant, there was also a seriousness under it that he didn’t expect. He needed her to believe him.

He needed her to think better of him than that.

He turned back to the lake and headed for one of the spots where the reeds grew thick. Behind him, he heard her undressing. The hooks were small and he knew he wouldn’t catch much with them, but even meager fish would be welcome. He couldn’t remember when he last had any at all, and God only knew when they would have a chance again.

A soft splash as she dove in. For some reason a smile pulled at his mouth – soft. A little fond. He liked her, he thought again. Had no reason to. In fact, he had many reasons _not_ to. But he did.

He fished. She swam. It was a moment of calm – a series of moments, and he found it lulling. Pleasant. So much shit behind them, behind _him_ – ugly shit, violent shit, shit he had seen, shit that had been done to him – shit he had done. He always told himself he had no choice in those things, only did what needed doing in order to stay alive and keep moving, but sometimes he wondered. His father and all his talk about _mercy_ and _pity_ and how, if he was a gunslinger, he could have none of either. How he would need to make a hawk of himself, seeing everything, sparing nothing, all cold pragmatism and no hesitation.

He had spent a great deal of time thinking, in those later days and months and years between the burning of his home and mother and his eighteenth year of life. Thinking about the darkness he felt swelling there, the deepening danger he sensed all around – not just in his father but in Merle, and in himself. They were taking their lessons, was the problem – taking them to head and to heart. He didn’t _want_ to; his father loved to call him weak, to call him a delicate little maid, a shrinking violet, _milady_ , but what his father had not known – and what Merle had perhaps only sensed – was that very early a seed of rebellion had taken root in him and had grown with each passing day. Little by little, taller and stronger, forming tough bark and leaves as sharp and needle-thin as the pines that surrounded them now.

Growing thorns.

Until one day lightning struck and it burned.

And now there was calm. Ease. A light wind whispered in the trees at his back, and the lack of any animal sign ceased to trouble him. The water lapped gently at the shore and the sun sparkled off its surface, tugging at his eyelids. To his right, at the edge of his vision – though he was not _watching_ for it – he saw flashes of the outline of Beth’s naked body above that shimmer, and he admired what little he could see without feeling any specific desire for it. There was a grace in her, a strange grace that for some reason he associated with a filly – still a little awkward on her legs, still learning how to be in her own body, but with the promise of formidable strength and speed and power.

She was young, but this world would age her.

 _Let it not be too quickly,_ he thought – with a sudden odd desperation. _Let it not be so._

A tug on the line. He jerked back to full alertness – had he begun to doze? That was not good – and began to pull it in. Beth appeared to have noticed, for she was still, the water just up to her shoulders, looking toward him.

In spite of his lapse in concentration he was just feeling rather pleased with himself – something he almost _never_ felt – when what he had caught came into view and he froze.

It was a fish, in the most general sense of the word. It had fins, or it had things that were recognizable as fins. It had gills. Aside from that, it was a bulging, tumorous horror, its face eyeless and lumpy, colorless flesh dangling from one side of its gasping mouth. The entire back of its body was completely translucent, and its organs were visible, gray globular things that pulsed and pumped. Here and there it had scales, but the rest of it was smooth skin, almost mammal-like. It wriggled on the line, and even though it had no eyes Daryl had the terrible feeling that it was looking at him and resenting him deeply.

It was not that it was a mutant. That in itself was not especially surprising, though it was disappointing.

It was the water from which it had come, and what else was in that water now.

“Beth.” His voice rang out sharp and somehow flat, devoid of emotion. “Beth, get out.”

She didn’t move. “Daryl, what—”

“ _Now._ ” He shoved himself to his feet and whirled on her, still holding the line, and she must have been close enough to see his face and read what his voice hadn’t contained, because all at once she was moving, launching herself toward the bank. She shoved herself out and onto it, for the moment seemingly abandoning any care for modesty.

He looked back at the fish. He should keep the line – he couldn’t be sure of replacing the wire quickly, and wire was useful for all kinds of things – but he didn’t want to touch the thing. It wasn’t disgust, though he felt a healthy amount of that. It was the possibilities of what touching it might do to him if he did.

“What is it?” Beth at his elbow, already dressed in her jeans and camisole, pulling her shirt on over her head—and she froze just as he had, staring. “Daryl…”

Half a question in that word. He didn’t need her to ask it aloud. _Was I in danger? Am I now? Do I need to be afraid?_

“You’re probably fine,” he said, and tried very hard to sound convincing. The truth was there was no way to know. She might very well be. Or, if she had swallowed enough of the water – and even if she hadn’t swallowed any of it at all – she might have taken a dose of something sufficient to give her one of the more agonizing deaths possible.

“So I guess we’re not refillin’ the canteen,” she said. She sounded a little distant. Quiet. “Even if we boil it—”

“No fuckin’ way.” He glanced back at his gunna, laid out on the grass with the poncho – which he had removed when they reached the shade. “Get stuff together. We ain’t stayin’ here.”

She was just moving to do what he said what the first howls sounded.

He moved without thinking. The hawk was now all of him, subsuming everything else. He dropped the line and the crossbow was off his shoulder and at the ready as he rushed toward her, dragged the sack off the ground and thrust it into her hands. He knew those howls. Knew them well enough, anyway. What specifically they were, what beast, didn’t matter. What mattered was that there was another and then another, answering, and that meant there were more.

“C’mon,” he hissed. “We gotta—”

The wolves came out of the trees.

They came in a pack of six, widely dispersed, running all in a line that stretched out along the treeline. Daryl knew instantly what it was: a strategy to cut off any escape to either side, should their prey try something so foolhardy. They came fast, foam flying from their muzzles, and as he looked and Beth let out a little cry he saw what the lake had done to them.

They were huge, almost the size of ponies, their bodies rolling with muscle. Their teeth stood out at jagged angles, far more of them than there should have been, yellow and sharp as knives. Their fur was a speckled gray-black – where there was fur at all. Large patches of their hides were nothing but bare skin, raw and peeling with the poison that coursed through their blood and their heredity.

Their faces were only partially the faces of dogs. Their muzzles were flat, their eyes high-set and facing directly forward, their mouths wide.

They looked almost like men. Misshapen, obscene men loping along on all fours, grinning, closing in for the kill.

“Run, Beth,” he breathed. Though they were fast. Probably too fast. If he could slow them down with a few shots, maybe scare them just enough. “Along the bank. _Run—”_

Panic didn’t seem to have paralyzed her and he felt a rush of hope as he brought the bow to bear on the oncoming muties. She was running, yes, she might get away at least if he could just—

Another five burst into view, running toward them from the left.

Cutting them off.

She skidded to a halt, looked back at him with her eyes wide and wild—and he was already shooting, a bolt finding the head of the lead wolf – the largest, he thought, hoped, maybe the alpha if they even had an alpha – and another bolt already nocked and flying.

The others didn’t stop. They didn’t even slow. He could see their eyes – red eyes, gods help him. Red fucking eyes, like demons.

And there were too many.

“The dam,” he cried, their one option presenting itself immediately and almost calmly. He might feel fear but the hawk circled, watched with pristine coolness, considered everything and determined what had to be done. “Across it! Go! Go, Beth, for your father’s sake!”

But he was already moving ahead of her.

Later he would look back and curse his own selfish sense of self-preservation, his own overwhelming will to survive. In that moment, even as he shouted at her to run, he had almost forgotten her. Perhaps it was too long traveling alone or perhaps it was his father’s lessons proving their ultimate power over everything he wanted to be. He ran in front of her, even as he turned back to cover her escape, even as he shot another one of them and it tumbled off the edge of the dam and fell screaming to the rocks below. Because the things were following, of _course_ they were, and closing fast. It was a good strategy, as far as it went; he had locked them into attacking in a straight line, one at a time, and that might have even won the thing if there hadn’t been so many.

More were coming out of the trees. Three more. Four. Five.

 _You will die here,_ he thought calmly. Not his father’s voice, not Merle. Himself. _You will die here as a fool, a damned fool like your father always said you would be. You will die choking on your own blood while these abominations tear out your bowels, but before that happens you will watch the same happen to her. You will watch her die, screaming, and that will be your punishment for your failure._

No, not his own voice. Not now.

Walter o'fucking Dim. The Man in fucking Black.

_You will die and she will die because you did not take the path, gunslinger. You did not take the path set for you long before your birth._

Slowly, so slowly, he saw Beth trip. He saw one foot slip off the concrete and he saw her tumble down. Sideways.

He saw Beth fall.

~

She didn’t scream. She felt the urge to scream, but she didn’t. She refused. She was all cold terror, but she wasn’t _panic,_ and under it all was a hard stubbornness. She might die here, but she was _not_ going to die screaming.

And she was _not_ going to die without trying to save herself.

Even as she fell she saw how close she was to the other side, and she saw how close she was to Daryl. She saw him rising away, almost out of her reach, but just as it happened his hand flew down for her and she _reached_ , further than she would have believed she could, kicking madly at the air as if she could swim through it.

Her fingers slipped.

Seized.

_Held._

Then the world, which had slowed, _slammed_ back into motion, and he was hauling her up, yelling her name as he did so, and when she felt something bite into the leg of her jeans there was still no panic in her. She hissed in anger – almost more in _irritation_ \- and kicked at it, felt her boot connect squarely with its head and looked down just in time to see the wolf-thing go hurtling down to meet the rocks. She saw its body break open, saw the spray of blood as it spattered over the gray.

Then she was on her feet – somehow she hadn’t dropped the gunna sack – and Daryl was dragging her the rest of the way across, her boots abruptly transitioning from concrete to soft, springy ground.

Again, with as much confusion as annoyance, she thought _Why doesn’t he use his fucking_ guns?

More of them were following in a straight, steady line – but a little slower, a little more cautious. They might be monsters, but they were also apparently possessed of an infernally sharp intelligence. She turned away as Daryl released her and tore after him, the sheer wall of the rock so close now – trapped, by the Man Jesus they would be _trapped_ – and Daryl turned aside, grabbed her again and pulled her on. She saw the flat gray of the bunker, a rusted brown blur of a door. _It won’t open,_ she thought, seeing at once what he meant to do. _Of course it won’t open, it can’t, it—_

It swung open with a scream of hinges and Daryl shoved her through. She stumbled, almost fell into cool, musty air, air she was sure had not been disturbed in many years, saw a glimpse of a featureless concrete floor colorless with dust. She turned and saw Daryl silhouetted in a brilliant rectangle of daylight, saw the nearest wolf hurling itself at him with its jaws wide and slavering – and the door shut with a _boom_ that practically rattled her teeth in her head.

And the world was utterly dark.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Are you afraid of the dark, reader?
> 
> Because I sure am.

 

 

4

 

“Daryl.”

Beth's voice was steady, at least in her own ears. Calm. Level. She wasn’t panicking – she hadn’t before with the wolf-things, she hadn’t when she nearly fell from the dam, she wasn’t going to panic now because of a little dark.

Because of a little total and impenetrable dark.

She heard him moving, the scuffling sound of his boots in the dust. She didn’t want to trip and fall – somehow tripping and falling into that utter darkness was more terrifying than anything that might be in it – but she took a careful step forward and then another, feeling with the toes of her boots, her hands held out in front of her.

Experimentally, she closed her eyes. There was no difference between that and opening them.

“Daryl?” This time when he moved he was much closer, and he must have reached for her at the same instant she reached for him, because his hands found her face just as hers found his chest. He was broad, solid – in the dark he felt even more so than she knew he was – and she was filled with an almost childish urge to press forward, press against him, wrap her arms around him and hold on.

She shook it off, reached up with one hand and closed her fingers around his wrist. His hands were still on her face, framing it, his palms rough and warm against her jaw.

The darkness didn’t feel so complete anymore.

“Y’alright?” His voice was low, slightly breathless – shaking a little, and after a few seconds of sheer relief that he was simply _here,_ that they were _here_ and they were alive, regardless of what else they might have stumbled into and what might happen now, she realized why.

He was afraid. Still afraid – or shaken by the aftershocks of his fear, coming back down from the rush of it.

She hadn’t thought that kind of fear was in him.

She nodded, and then realized he couldn’t see her, but immediately after she remembered that he could _feel_ her, because he sighed and removed his hands. She didn’t release him, and he didn’t try to pull away. He turned his hand in her grasp, his own fingertips brushing her wrist, and then she felt his fingers threading through hers.

Reflexively, she squeezed. After a few seconds more, he squeezed back.

She took a breath. “What now?”

“You got the sack?”

“Yeah.” Once again she had nearly forgotten it. She shrugged it off and held it out to him, nudging it against his chest. He took it from her and squeezed her hand again, and to her it felt like signaling more than reassurance.

“I’m gonna let go. Have to kneel down. Stay put, I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

He withdrew his hand and instantly she was adrift, feeling as if the very floor was falling away from her. She had never before been in total darkness – a simple thing, an obvious thing, but not the kind of thing that would occur to her until she was faced with it as she was now. There had always been candlelight, oil lamps, stars. Moonlight. Fire. Always something, even though as a child she had feared the dark, and when she cried and tried to run from her bed Maggie would come across the hall and lie down with her, wrap Beth up in her arms and sing to her.

Then after a while they would sing together.

If she cried a little, surely it didn’t matter. Daryl couldn’t see her.

She kept herself silent. Normally she would have wiped the tears away, cleared her vision, but it didn’t matter now, and there was a freedom in that which made it easier. And in truth, she thought now that he might not think less of her if he saw it. He might not regard it as weakness. Not because he was especially tender-hearted – she didn’t think _that_ – but because she knew by now that he had a thick streak of pragmatism running through him, and he might regard weeping like this as simply one more thing she had to do in order to keep going.

To do what he said he wanted. Keep up. Do her part.

She could hear him searching through the sack, and wondered distantly what he was looking for, what could possibly be useful in this kind of darkness. Then he drew in a breath – pleased, she thought with faint surprise – and she heard him striking flint and saw sparks fly.

Light flared into being and her hand flew up to shield her eyes.

It wasn’t bright, and it was a yellow color that looked vaguely sickly. But it was light, and as he lifted it she saw it was a small lantern, a flame held in a glass jar with a metal reservoir at its bottom which she guessed contained the stuff that made it burn. Oil, perhaps. Probably. He straightened up, and she wiped at her face.

He was smiling, though the smile looked a bit grim, and the hard shadows moving across his face as the lantern swung from his fingers made him appear older.

“Not much, but it’s somethin’.” He raised it higher, looking around, and she did the same.

They were standing in a small concrete room, a kind of antechamber. It was completely bare, and its corners were thick with old cobwebs that hung unoccupied and caked with dust. Overhead was a long tube of cloudy glass in a wire frame. Directly in front of the door through which they had come was an open exit without any visible door at all, and beyond it…

More darkness.

Daryl stepped toward it and she followed. The lantern’s light shifted and illuminated the wall beside the doorway. Signs, she saw – faded yellow and too dusty to read clearly. Daryl reached up and brushed the dust away.

Arrows, all pointing ahead.

GENERATOR/POWERHOUSE

TURBINES

CONTROL ROOM

“What does it mean?” she asked softly. The words themselves – yes, she could read them, but they might as well have been in another language for all the sense they made. The letters themselves were strange – legible, but the lines of them weren’t quite what she knew. The alphabet she had been taught… And yet not.

Daryl shook his head. “Dunno.”

But looking at him, sidelong, she wasn’t sure she fully believed him.

"Well, we can't go back." She took a breath and squared her shoulders. She didn't want to go into that darkness, no, even with Daryl's little lantern, even with the knowledge that death waited for them past that first door. "I mean, unless you think they'll go away eventually..."

"Maybe. Maybe not. They were smart. Too fuckin' smart." He turned back to the sack and nodded at it. "We wait around and try the door in a while, they come bustin' in soon as we open it a crack. No. Get our shit. We'll see if there's another way out."

 _Our shit,_ she thought as she went to get the sack and slung it over one shoulder. _Ours._

Something fluttered in her belly and she wasn't sure why.

When she turned back to him he had lifted his crossbow and was affixing the lantern's wire handle to a hook on the bow's underside. Clever, she thought, leaving his hands free. But that also brought back the thought that there might be something waiting for them in the darkness for which he would _need_ his hands, and this time the flutter in her wasn't pleasant at all.

Well. Nothing for it. He gave her one last glance and headed through the doorway. She followed.

They moved into and down a corridor of the same rough concrete as the first room, and just as bare - and just as dusty. When Beth looked up she saw the same glass tube - longer this time, and then another, a series - and guessed that it must once have been some kind of light source. How long ago? It was impossible to say, but as they walked she began to sense that a few years might have been an under-estimate. Perhaps by quite a lot. The place felt old, and while she had been aware of it, it hit her more consciously that she had never seen a structure like this. Concrete, yes, and that had also possessed a distinct sense of age. But this was something beyond that.

It was not a comfortable feeling. But it wouldn't have been anyway.

The scuffing sound of their footsteps seemed to echo beyond what the corridor's size could account for, and she guessed there must be another exit ahead, something that led out into a much wider space. But it also sounded distant, still, and she was beginning to imagine a vastness of concrete, something much larger than what they had seen from outside. All they had seen was the anteroom, and she remembered how it had been nestled up against the rocky slope, where it became more of a cliff.

They were inside that cliff. She was sure. They were walking into something built directly into the rock. Which would have taken power and skill and ability beyond anything she had ever known. Anything she had imagined.

"Any idea what this place was?" Her own voice was unnaturally loud in the echoing stillness, and it nearly made her jump. But ahead of her Daryl didn't seem startled.

"No." He lifted the bow and the light swung dizzyingly. "And it don't matter. Only thing we gotta worry 'bout is gettin' outta here."

"I still gotta wonder," she said softly – not arguing, simply pointing it out. He wasn't wrong; that was all that mattered. But he couldn't exactly blame her for doing the other.

He sighed, and after a moment or two he spoke again. "Probably somethin' to do with the dam."

"Yeah, I figured out _that_ much." She walked a little faster, drawing closer to him, still glancing around though so far there was nothing new to see. "But why'd they need it? Whoever they were," she added. "Don't take this much just to have a dam. All you need for that's some rocks and hands to lay 'em."

"I look like I been here before?" The look he shot her was exasperated, though only faintly.

"You been all over. You never seen anythin' like this before?"

He gave her another look, his face thrown half into shadow, and this time he didn't look exasperated. This time his expression was difficult to read, and it wasn't just the light. "Not like this," he said quietly, and something in his tone told her to leave it be.

So she did.

When they came to the next doorway it was so abrupt that she almost stumbled into his back when he halted. She was about to ask him why, but when she moved to stand beside him and looked and saw what the lantern illuminated, she forgot the question.

It wasn't anything especially remarkable. That wasn't why. They were standing at the entrance to a larger room, perhaps three times the size of the anteroom and divided by rows of metal lockers. Benches sat between them, and several of the lockers were standing open, a few of their doors hanging partway off their hinges. As before, cobwebs and dust were everywhere, but on the floor strange things were scattered: small crates of some material that didn't look like metal and didn't look like wood, bottles, what appeared to be packs made of rough canvas, piles of cloth – clothing? – and boots.

And there, on one of the benches, a kind of mask.

Enormous round eyes, strange curves around the face, and the whole thing terminating in a stubby snout that gave it a bestial appearance. It sat there, maybe the relic of some long-forgotten ritual, and she felt that it was staring at them.

She hated the look of it.

"There were people," she murmured, and Daryl only nodded.

He stepped into the room, swinging the crossbow and the light slowly around, and as he did she followed and turned to look back. On the wall by the door was another sign, obscured with dust like the others, and she brushed it clean and peered closer to make it out in the dimness.

ADJUNCT STATION 1-A

Again she could read the oddly-formed words, and again they meant nothing to her.

Daryl touched her shoulder. "C'mon."

They made their way through the room. Dust made it difficult to see more than the outlines of anything, but as they passed another bench she saw another of the masks, this one fallen and half covered by a tangle of cloth. She felt a strange, troubling impulse to bend down and touch it, pick it up, perhaps lift it to her own face, and she shuddered.

Daryl might have sensed it, for he stopped and glanced back at her. "Y'alright?"

She sighed. "Just... Sooner we get outta here the better."

"Say true, say thankya," he murmured, and moved on.

Another doorway came into view ahead of them. Just before they reached it she saw an opening to their left and gave it a quick look. It was another chamber, smaller, and though the dust lay thick there as well, she could make out what appeared to be tile with metal spigots protruding from the walls. They had only used a tub for bathing at home, but she still recognized them immediately.

Showers.

She followed Daryl into the next corridor.

This one was nearly identical to the first, but a thick pipe ran along the right side of the ceiling, covered entirely with rust. Nozzles marked it at intervals. It was impossible to tell what it had carried – water was all she could think of, but she knew enough to know that any guess she made about this place was likely to be a bad one.

No, one wouldn't need all this for just a dam. So this must not be only for a dam.

Daryl pulled to a halt again – sooner than she expected, though this time she didn't stumble, and she didn't bother asking what he had stopped for. She stood beside him and looked – and her breath stilled in her chest.

The room with the lockers had been big. This room was immense, huge far beyond the reach of the lantern’s meager light. She could see a little – the walls on either side of the doorway, a patch of floor in front of them, a skeletal metal staircase a little way to their left and enormous cylindrical things just ahead of them. These last towered over the two of them, and she could just make out more skeletal metal above – railings running along their rims. But the rest of the room – a hall, really, it was a _hall_ – was lost in shadow. She _felt_ the rest of it, its sheer size, difficult to even comprehend. She had never in her life been inside a structure so large.

“Jesus,” she whispered – her father would have given her a stern reprimand for minor blasphemy – and the hall took the word and carried it up into itself, amplified it ten-fold. It sent a shiver through her and she fell silent, as if speaking again might rouse something from long sleep. Something less than friendly.

There was a word from her father’s Bible. A name for a creature of the deep, fearful and large beyond reckoning. She thought of it and couldn’t shake free of it.

_Leviathan._

“I know it,” Daryl said, just as soft. He took one hand off the bow for a few seconds and laid it on her shoulder. He nodded at the staircase and she guessed his reasons – _up,_ any upward direction was probably a good thing. “C’mon.”

They went up. The stairs weren’t as rusty as the pipe had been – in fact they were barely rusty at all. She had worried that the steps might not support them, but though they creaked slightly they felt sturdy enough. Whatever this place was, she thought, and whoever had built it, they had built it to sustain the weight of years.

Halfway up she glanced back the way they had come, the bottom of the stairs lost in the dark, and the words of the sign returned to her – and now they seemed even more ominous, though she couldn’t have said why. _GENERATOR/POWERHOUSE. TURBINES. CONTROL ROOM._

More words. Magic, almost. She wasn’t sure she believed in magic – though of course growing up she had been told stories and not all of them had been told as if they were merely _stories_ – but here in the dark, only Daryl’s tiny light to follow, the possibility loomed like the massive cylinders themselves.

Not good magic. Not the magic of childhood fairies. Magic that lurked and twisted, manipulated unseen things. Waited to strike.

The stairs deposited them on a long catwalk made of the same spindly metal, but like the stairs it felt robust enough to walk on. Daryl hesitated at the top and looked right to left, and appeared unsure of which way to go. He raised the crossbow again and waited for the lantern to stop swinging, though it did little to extend its reach.

“Guess?” Beth said, trying to keep her voice light. But again the word echoed unsettlingly, and she bit her lip.

Daryl didn’t answer. He moved a little way to the right and actually lowered the bow, and she thought he was peering at something, perhaps waiting for his eyes to adjust. She followed the direction of his gaze and saw nothing but more darkness, but he nodded to her and started down the catwalk, moving slowly but with a kind of confidence he hadn’t possessed before.

“What is it?”

“Saw somethin’. Light, maybe.” He had lifted and leveled the bow again, using the lantern as before. The end of the catwalk was lost to view, as was whatever was below them, but as Beth looked up and to the left, toward where she knew the wall must be, there _was_ something there. Just the faintest flash, there and gone again, and at first she thought it must be her imagination. But it came a second time, a third, and now she was sure.

Light.

But not daylight. She was sure of that too.

Still, it was better than the unbroken dark. Just for an instant she saw them from high above, wherever the unseen ceiling of the place was – two tiny figures moving as if through thin air, a candle flame before them, sheer nothingness behind. Like something else from one of those childhood tales, from one of the darker ones. The ones that would make her afraid, that would bring Maggie in to sing to her.

But she wasn’t a child anymore.

She lost track of how long they walked. It might have been only a few minutes; it might have been longer. It was like the road, how distance there had warped and become unreliable, only worse, in time as well as space, and vertigo seized her and she had to grip the railing at her side. She wanted Daryl to talk to her, to say _anything_ , but her own words had dried up and she didn’t know how to ask for it. He was close, very close, but all at once he felt so distant, the darkness flooding in between them.

She shook herself, hard, and her free hand clenched into a fist. She felt her nails bite into her palm.

And then they were there.

The catwalk opened abruptly to the left and Daryl turned, and at the same moment she looked and saw clearly what had caught his attention. What had caught hers.

Enormous panes of glass, wide and as tall as two men standing on each other’s shoulders – an entire wall of glass, more glass than she had ever seen. Daryl’s lantern, reflected off it – nothing else, but she didn’t immediately feel disappointment. She merely stared at it, following Daryl mechanically as they climbed another short flight of stairs and passed through a doorway – the widest yet.

Entranced by the glass though she was, she didn’t miss the sign on the wall just outside, in those same strange letters:

CONTROL ROOM

The room itself was mercifully small – at least by comparison – and as Daryl swung the lantern slowly around, Beth turned in place, following the light.

What she saw both made sense and left her profoundly confused.

Lining two of the walls – including the one of glass – was what looked like a long desk, though not like any desk she had ever seen. It was covered in a mosaic of small squares – buttons, she thought, or at least they looked like they might be – and larger squares of what appeared to be more glass were set into it at regular intervals. Some of them were very large, taking up the entire surface of the desk top to bottom, and before them were high-backed chairs made of something that might be leather. She was aware that there were shelves set against another wall, and a wide open space on which were posted some kind of pictures, but it was the desk and the glass that fascinated her, and she found herself moving toward it without meaning to do so. Daryl had turned the light away from her as he stepped toward the wall with the pictures, but there was still enough to see by, and she reached out for the closest chair as she approached it.

“Don’t touch nothin’,” Daryl called, but she barely heard him. The glass, there was something about the glass in the desk, something so _familiar_ …

_Bad late-night movies. Cartoons on Saturday mornings, sugar cereal with Shawn. Those stupid teen dramas on weeknights that she had loved and so had Maggie, even if Maggie never would totally admit it. Football. The Olympics. Elections. Years and years marked by these things, by the moving pictures under that glass._

_Watching the panicked news reports. Watching people run._

_Watching the city burn._

Her fingers drifted across the smooth, dusty surface, and as they did her other hand groped for the chair—

And touched something that gave under her, slipped sideways and fell to the floor with a dry _clack_ sound.

She jerked back, jerked her hand away. Daryl swung back toward her, the shadows dancing, and as she looked down she saw what she had touched.

Empty eye sockets stared up at her, set over the top of a wide and infernally cheery grin. Half a skull, dry skin and strings of hair still clinging to it, the jaw where it had skittered a few feet away, and beside her a headless mummy dressed in a colorless suit of clothes that looked half ready to fall to dust.

She let out a soft cry – more of shock than fear, and Daryl hurried toward her. “I told you not to _touch_ nothin’.”

“Cry _pardon,_ ” she hissed— And stopped, dropping into a slow crouch as a flash of white on the floor caught her eye. Not bone. The mummy had dropped it when she touched its head. She reached for it, moving with slow care, and picked it up, intending to ignore any protests Daryl offered.

But he said nothing.

She half expected it to disintegrate at her touch. But it didn’t, and she straightened up with it in her hand, holding it so Daryl’s light could catch it.

It was a picture. Not a painting, not a sketch. A clearer picture than any she had ever seen. _Photo,_ a soft voice whispered, _it’s a photo,_ but she hardly noticed. In the picture was a man with his arm around a woman, both smiling, both clearly happy. Three blond identical children who couldn’t have been older than twelve grinned in the foreground. They were outside in the sun, a bright blue day, green trees visible behind them.

The occupant of the chair had died clutching the picture.

She looked up at Daryl, wordlessly holding it out for him to see. He looked down at it and back up at her, and said nothing.

“What happened here?” she whispered.

Daryl shook his head and glanced over his shoulder. “Dunno, but there’s more of ‘em back there. Another room. Piled up in front of a door.” Beth looked and saw another open doorway at the back of the room, and yet more darkness. “Looks like they were tryin’ to get out.”

Beth worked that over for a moment, in all its implications, still holding the picture. “You try the door?” But she already knew the answer. He nodded.

“Ain’t openin’. Even old as it is. I mean, we could try to bust it down between us, but…” He shrugged uneasily. “There’s a map or somethin’ on the wall. Don’t wanna touch it, looks like it’s about to fall apart, but if I can get a good look at it…”

She turned away from him, back to the desk. She was listening, understanding, but the glass was tugging at her again. It was important, somehow, in some deep way that made no sense at all. She could almost _see_ …

A plaque just above it, hints of those familiar, alien letters. Almost absently she reached up and swept the dust away with the flat of her hand. And froze as she read what was beneath it.

NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS

It was as if it rose up and bit her. She hissed in a startled, pained breath and pulled her hand sharply away, staring down at her fingers and half expecting to see them bleeding. They weren’t, of course – they were  _words,_ she chided herself, not _snakes_ – but when she looked at the plaque again a hard shudder ran through her, as if someone had pressed Year’s End ice to the back of her neck. She glanced back at Daryl. Daryl met her gaze, silent, and in his eyes she saw everything she was feeling.

This was a bad place. Very bad. She wasn’t certain it was worse than what they had left outside – but she also wasn’t certain it _wasn’t._

“Let’s—” he started, and something screamed in the dark.

It sounded distant. Echoing. It also didn’t sound even remotely human.

For a few seconds – though it felt like longer – there was nothing else but their own breathing, nothing but the pounding of the blood in her ears. Then Daryl touched her arm.

“Yar, heard it too.”

“Should we go?” she breathed. She had no idea what she would prefer. Every option seemed hateful, senseless, suicidally dangerous. She hadn’t felt like this when the farm burned. She hadn’t felt like this with the wolf-things. She had never felt like this before in her life.

For the first time, she envied him his weapons with such viciousness that it made her jaw ache with how hard she clenched it.

“No,” he said softly, and then – as if reading her thoughts – he bent down. When he straightened, she saw he was holding his unsheathed knife out to her, handle first. “Take it.”

She did. Immediately, as her fingers curled around the handle, something in her tensed and relaxed both at once. This was right. This felt _right._

But not quite.

It might have been that sense of almost-rightness that loosened her tongue. Or it might have been the remnants of her fear. It might have been frustration. It might have been any number of things. It didn’t matter, because once the question was out it was far too late to take it back.

“Why don’t you use your guns?”

He stared at her as if she had grown an extra head, from which the question had come. “Cry pardon?”

“Your guns. You don’t use ‘em. You did at the farm, and I think that was only ‘cause you had no choice.” The words came out hard, direct, unafraid and unapologetic, and she discovered that she felt all of those things. “Why?”

He opened his mouth, and he looked as if he had no more idea of what he was going to say than she did, but another scream cut him off – a long series of them.

“We can’t stay here,” she said. She spoke quietly, but not in a whisper, and this time her voice didn’t waver. The handle of the knife was steady and solid against her palm.

“Goin’ out there ain’t gonna be better,” he replied, and stepped away from her, moving rapidly toward the wall which he had said held the map. “Not if we got no idea where we’re goin’. Watch the door, I’m gonna—”

It was as if it had been waiting for his back to turn.

Later, with nothing but her racing thoughts as distraction from what was around her, she wondered if it had known. If _they_ had known. If, in their hunting – though God only knew what there was down there for them to hunt – they had learned to identify the strongest, to pick that one off first with sheer advantage of surprise, then take care of the weaker one when the strongest was dead or disabled. If it was perhaps, like the wolf-things, plan and not pure instinct. If they had been there, waiting for them – that brutal, mad intelligence, following them as he and she moved through the dark, tracking them and biding time until they were cornered.

Making sport of it.

It didn’t matter. It would never matter. The thing came through the door in a blur, faster than she knew anything could move – far too fast for her to do anything. Far too fast for Daryl to turn. She caught a glimpse of a long, pale form, vaguely human, skin milky and hairless, a smooth, eyeless bulb of a head, hooked fingers outstretched as it sprang onto his back. He let out a strangled shout and swung the crossbow up, tried to hit the thing with the bow’s limb, the lantern turning the room to a confusion of shadows worse than the darkness. She saw blood shining slick and black, impossible to tell whose it was, and then she was moving, the knife slashing out, no thought in it.

None necessary. Her body knew what to do.

She buried the blade in the thing’s side, and as it let out a shriek and threw its lump of a head backward she pulled the knife free and stabbed again, again, punching the blade through flesh with an ease that was deeply satisfying. The pale thing screamed again and dropped back to the floor, twisting – and more screams answered. Distant, still.

But not, she knew, for long.

Daryl staggered heavily, turned. Somehow he still had the light, the bow, and she saw two things. The first was that, unless there were more in his gunna, he had only two bolts remaining. Their fletching stood out bright, crazily so, and caught her gaze like a spark of lightning.

It was a welcome distraction. Just for a fraction of a second. Because the second thing she saw was the churned pink and red of the mass of torn flesh at the juncture of Daryl’s throat and shoulder, and the dark sheen of his blood as it soaked his shirt.

He reached up and laid a hand over the wound. It was huge – the creature must have ripped at him like a wildcat. Blood streamed between his fingers and down his arm. “Beth,” he croaked, and his eyes flicked toward the door even as he swayed.

It was the sudden, cool lack of fear in her that made it possible for her to choose. She set aside Daryl for an instant, set aside his bizarre reluctance to use his guns. She could fight, yes. The thing on the floor was wounded. She had the knife. She could kill it, and she could probably take down another. Maybe three. She had killed mutants at the farm. She knew she could. She could kill, and she could run, and maybe she could live.

But Daryl stumbled back and nearly fell, still trying to stop the bleeding with his hand, his lips moving silently. _Beth,_ maybe.

Or _Run._

He was about to drop the bow. She saw it, saw the flicker of the lantern at its end. She lunged forward and caught it just as it dropped, just as two more burst in through the doorway, hissing and gibbering noises that were almost words. The fallen one writhed on the floor, spat and gurgled and bled, and the other two hesitated. Perhaps wondering how it had happened, if these prey weren’t as easy as they had gathered. If they needed a new strategy.

It was the second she needed. She was almost laughing as she shoved Daryl back toward the one available escape, laughing because it was an obscene parody of how they had come into the dark in the first place, because it was the universe having a marvelous joke at their expense, because _Ka is a motherfucking_ bitch _of a wheel._

She didn’t even know if there was a door that closed, but of course there was. She didn’t know if it would lock behind her, if she was just condemning them to a slow death rather than a quick one.

Well. Daryl probably quicker than her.

She was still teetering on the edge of hysterical laughter as Daryl staggered away from her, as she let go of the crossbow, as she whirled and found the handle of the door and gave it a shove that sent pain flaring hot and sharp from her shoulder all down her body. It swung shut with smooth ease, cutting off the beasts and their angry screams into lower muffled snarling. She heard Daryl let out a cry, turned and saw him falling onto a bed of tangled corpses, their empty holes for eyes, reaching for him with bony hands to embrace him, make him one of them. All grinning, enjoying the joke.

 _They’ll get up and walk now,_ Beth thought calmly. _They will._

Then the lantern light flickered, wavered, went out.

And they were in darkness once more.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, as usual with this thing (should I just stop expecting things to go any other way? because I think I should stop expecting things to go any other way) this chapter happened rather more quickly than I expected. In part that's because of how this section is working, structurally - it's difficult to pause for any lengthy period.
> 
> Speaking of, I have to apologize for the cliffhangers, for those who hate cliffhangers; I swear it's way less me being a jerk and way more how everything is flowing at the moment and where it makes sense to break things up. Basically either we get cliffhangers or we get a single chapter that's 15k words long, which I cannot manage and I suspect you might also find a bit much. So, gentle reader, I appreciate you bearing with me.
> 
> Me and Daryl's feelings, because man he has a lot of those.
> 
> For anyone who cares, I've been writing a little meta about this thing, and [this](http://dynamicsymmetry.tumblr.com/post/108232076961/fic-blather-because-i-like-to-hear-myself-type) is a bit pertinent to some stuff in this chapter and the story as a whole.
> 
> Onward.

 

 

5

 

When Daryl had still been very young - perhaps no more than a year after his mother burned in her sleep, so he couldn't have been older than eleven - his father had taken into his head to teach him and Merle a lesson. A lesson of particular pointedness and importance.

By then his father had taken to drinking heavily. The man had always possessed a weakness for it for as far back as Daryl could remember, but after his mother was gone things changed rather abruptly. He wouldn't simply drink himself into a slow belligerence; he would drink himself into rages, terrible bouts of shouting and throwing things against walls until he fell into a stupor from which neither Daryl nor Merle could rouse him. In these rages he would also rant, sometimes incomprehensibly but also often in terms Daryl could understand. He ranted about Gilead, about a man named Cort, about betrayal and death and the moving on of the world, about the breaking of things he called the _Beams._

And he raved about the Tower.

That last terrified Daryl long before he knew what it meant.

It was around this time that his father seemed to become obsessed with something besides the Tower - though the Tower took first place in all his fixations, and now and then, perhaps after a particularly savage beating, Daryl would think _it's not really the drink at all, the drink is just what's in front of it, because it's the Tower doing this to him, it's actually his godsdamned Tower_ \- which was the idea that he might make his sons into whatever he had tried to be and had abandoned. Or been cast away from. _Gunslingers,_ he said, that he was going to make them _gunslingers._

Then, later, that only one of them would be. That he would have to test them both. See who was worthy.

He seemed to want to pit them against each other, for reasons that escaped Daryl at the time, even as they left him heart-sick and angry. Merle was difficult sometimes, even mean, but Merle was his older brother, and Daryl understood that it often fell to the elder sibling to be mean to the younger. It was the way of things. He never doubted that Merle loved him, no matter the cuffs and scrapes and occasional cruel tricks. He never doubted that Merle would go on loving him long after his father was gone, and he loved Merle with a kind of desperation that comes only when someone must place all of their love in the hands of a single person, for there is no one else to love.

But now Merle was being praised when Daryl faltered, his success contrasted with Daryl's inexcusable shortcomings. Occasionally the reverse would be true, but his father was clearly favoring Merle in most things, harder on Daryl, seemingly trying to build contempt in one and resentment in the other. It was maddening. It was frightening. And though he had been isolated before, living up in the scrubby hills and sometimes seeing no one but Merle and his father for weeks on end, for the first time in his life Daryl began to understand what it meant to be truly alone.

Then his father changed the rules again. And when one of them failed, the other was punished in front of the one who had done the failing. So Daryl saw Merle beaten, beaten until he was bleeding, until he was screaming, until he fell into merciful unconsciousness, and if Daryl wept or begged for it to stop the beatings only became more vicious.

And then he began to believe Merle was failing in his own lessons on purpose.

Failing so he could see Daryl hurt in turn.

Daryl was never sure if it was true, that suspicion. Probably it didn't matter. He refused to let his father win, refused to let poison seep into his heart, and when he was given a task he only worked harder to perform it correctly. He would be good enough, not for his father's sake but for Merle. He would save his brother. He would give anything, everything, only to see the one person he loved safe from harm.

Of course he failed in that as well. That above all things.

It was only later - many years later, after everything had changed - that he realized what his father had truly been doing.

~

He heard something. Someone, moving in the dark. Were his eyes open or closed? He wasn't entirely sure. His senses were a confused mess, a jumble he couldn't quite sort out. He was lying on something soft, something he _knew_ but didn't want to think about, and there was pain in his neck and shoulder - pain growing sharper and heavier by the second. Had he blacked out? Maybe. The sounds of movement weren't the only sounds now; he heard faint screeching and snarling, and then a dull thud as something threw itself against...

The door. The door Beth had closed after them.

He dragged in a strained breath and tried to push himself up, groping one-handed for the torn, gaping wound he knew was there. He felt warm wetness on his shirt, his chest, and it was still flowing. He felt that flow against his fingers when he found the ripped flesh and cloth, and the only thing that comforted him at all was that it was a flow.

Not a jet. Not a spurt. If the thing had torn open an artery he would already be dead. As it was he felt dizzy, slightly numb, cold.

If he lost much more blood, _how_ it was lost wouldn't matter much.

"Beth?"

Shit, his bow was gone. _Shit-_

"I'm here. Lay back down." He heard her again, and her movements sounded cautious. He heard a soft thump and a rustle and guessed it was his gunna, her searching through it. More screeches from beyond the door, but now they sounded more irritated than enraged, a little less shrill. "God, how do you ever _find_ anything in here?"

"What're you lookin' for?" His voice came out in a shaky croak and he bit back a wince.

"Your flint. Lantern went out. I don't think it broke. Doesn't feel broken." She paused. "Please tell me you got more oil."

He sighed and that seemed to be all the answer she needed.

"Alright. Then let's hope there's still some left in it." She was silent a moment more, then made a pleased sound, and he heard her moving away from him. Crawling, he thought. That was good. Smart. Much better than blundering about in the dark. Once again, she wasn't frightened beyond the ability to think clearly.

He smiled to himself, grimly. They might yet have a chance.

There was a spark, another, and the flame leaped back into being - but lower. Yellower, less clean. Yes, there was some left. Unless they were gifted a miracle, there probably wasn't enough.

Her face, thrown into shifting shadow. She lifted the lantern and his bow together and returned to him and the gunna, setting both down and searching again. "You got anythin' for doctorin'?"

"You know how?"

She glanced up at him and nodded. "Daddy was good at carin' for animals. People in Jael used to bring theirs to him. He taught me. Few things, anyway."

"Animals?" He let out a thin laugh, and it hurt him. Somehow it managed to hurt him everywhere. "Feel better already."

Beth shot him a look - _don't be a damn child_ \- and kept searching. "'s basically the same thing, y'know. So what you got?"

"Got..." Gods, what _did_ he have? It was becoming more and more difficult to think clearly, his thoughts growing muddy and tangled. "Got some loose cloth... Somewhere."

"Got a needle? Thread?"

"You ain't gonna sew this up." Just for a minute clarity returned to his mind and he remembered what he had felt when he touched the wound. He hadn't seen it, didn't know the full extent of it for sure, but he had felt enough. It wasn't a clean cut, wasn't even a jagged one. He had been ripped into, teeth pulling skin and flesh clean away. Stitches would likely do little good, at least the kind she could do. There would be nothing to pull together, nothing that wouldn't tear open again as soon as he moved. "Look at it."

She bent to him, laid a careful hand on his other shoulder. She leaned in - and drew in a hard breath.

"Daryl..."

_You're not going to make this better and that's all right,_ he thought - wanted to tell her. Wanted to touch her face and tell her, because he thought he understood, a little, the desperation she might now be feeling. The need to fix things, to hold onto what she had.

He knew what loss was, too.

"Then I'm gonna at least get the bleedin' stopped." She reached back into the sack and after a few seconds she pulled out the cloth - a long strip of it, thick and rough-woven but not especially robust - and tore a piece of it away, pressing it to his shoulder. He gasped at the sudden flare of pain and bit the insides of his cheeks to keep from crying out.

For a moment there was silence - _silence,_ he realized. Nothing from beyond the door, no animal screams or howls, not even any sound of movement. Either it was a trap to lure them out into false safety, or the things had gone.

_For now. But they'll wait. They'll not give up so easy._

"Should put out the lantern," he murmured. "Don't need it for this."

She looked at him and hesitated. He felt it - he didn't want to go back into that terrible darkness any more than she did. But he was right and she knew it, and as she stared at him in the low light her face seemed both impossibly young and impossibly old, someone he had never seen before and someone he knew so well he could identify them blind with a single touch.

And suddenly he was very glad that she, out of anyone else in all the worlds, was here with him.

It was terrifying.

"Alright." She reached over and there was a soft squeak as she turned the lantern off. For another short time neither of them said anything, and at last he reached up and laid tingling fingers over the back of her hand.

The pain was still there, but it was duller now. Perhaps it was genuinely fading. Perhaps it was simply how much blood he had lost. Either way.

"We're not gonna die down here," she said quietly.

He wanted to laugh. He couldn't. "You're that sure?"

"Mhmm." She pressed harder on the wound and the pain jabbed again. This time he couldn't hold back the choked whimper that pushed past his throat. She gave no sign she even noticed but simply kept talking. "Makes no sense. We didn't get outta that fire and away from those _things_ \- and those _other_ things - just to die in a hole. Ain't gonna happen."

"World don't make sense, girl."

She breathed a laugh - very soft. Hardly there. "Wouldn't kill you to have a little faith."

Something flooded into him then, warm and full, as if he had taken an entire cup of that tea all at once, but more. Warm and full but also aching, close to sorrow. He saw her in the green, beautiful with the green all around her, it had been so warm and so green that day

and

_They were both tired and so sad but she wouldn't give up, she was so sure, and later when she was wrong and she was weeping he wanted so badly to do something and he hadn't known how, hadn't known how and it hurt and once again he was failing, he was fucking it up just like always because he always did. And before, what he said, he had been cruel to her, and then he had been so sorry and hadn't known how to say it._

_So he had given her - he gave her something. He gave her something and it was important._

_It was a little thing, a simple thing, and somehow it meant everything._

_Maybe somehow it was almost enough._

"Daryl?"

She was almost whispering. Her hand on his face, her fingertips tracing over his cheek. He took a shuddering breath and then another, and he knew he didn't want to die.

"Why're you cryin'?"

Now, as then, there were no words.

~

He slept a little. He thought, maybe. The pain ebbed and flowed, and he knew that even if he lived it was going to get worse. Much worse. If all they had was a rag to bind it up with, even if the bleeding stopped it would very likely kill him anyway with infection. With fever. Poison would work its way into the wound, turn all the veins around it to angry red, fly through his blood into his brain and heart and burn them to nothing.

But no. Not down here. Not in the dark.

_By the faces of all my fathers, you'll die on the steps of the Tower._

_No. No. You'll die in her, in her fire, in her light, and when it comes you'll meet it smiling. You'll meet it with joy. Your dan-tete. Your little savior._

_Your little god._

Something pressed against his lips, cool. Liquid. The canteen, and she tipped it back and water flowed into his mouth. He hadn't realized how thirsty he was and it was all he could do not to gulp, fumbling for it with one hand. His other arm felt heavy, almost useless, and also stiff up by the shoulder as if something was holding back any movement - and he realized she had bound up the wound, tight as she could.

He could feel how light the canteen was. He tried to push it away, but she resisted.

"You should have it all."

"No, you-"

"You should have it _all,_ " she repeated, patient but steely, and he found he didn't have the strength to argue. He didn't want to.

He drank it all. Then he fell into the dark for a while longer.

~

When he returned he felt her lying close to him, pressed along his side, her hand on his stomach. Normally it would have made him tense up, pull away - too much, and unasked for. But now he was cold and shivering and he tried to get even closer to her, gasping when the pain surged up again and died away. She didn't hesitate; she slid her hand over to his side and shifted so she was almost half on top of him, and she was small but she was warm, and it was a little better.

_We're not gonna die down here._

"I think the bleedin' stopped," she murmured.

He managed a nod. A nod, gods, merely nodding was that difficult, there was no _way_ he was going to be able to walk. She had spent all their water on a dead man.

A dead man. He shifted and remembered.

"You know we're lyin' on bodies."

"I know." She laughed again, a puff of air against his neck. "I kinda don't care. I mean... It don't seem so bad. It's just cloth and bones. Dust."

_Dust to dust,_ he thought vaguely. _Dust to dust to dust._

_Losing it._

"You're strange, girl."

"Like you ain't?"

"Guess so."

Quiet again. Just her breathing and his, and beyond them the vast, whispering darkness.

"We're gonna wait a while longer. Then we're gonna try the door." She paused, though not long enough to give him a chance to protest. "How good a look did you get at the map? You got any idea which way we need to go?"

Not a good enough look. Or maybe he did, could be, but everything in his mind was so foggy. Everything was indistinct. It was hard to think past how good she felt against him, how all the fear had left him, how all he wanted to do was curl up into her and sleep again.

_On your feet, you little maggot._

His father, a cuff on the head, rocking him back. Sharp and painful - but very focusing. Very motivating when done right. Maybe his father had been a drunken monster, maybe he had tried to destroy everything in Daryl that Daryl wanted to hold onto, but there _had_ been good lessons, useful lessons, yes - lessons that had kept him alive for two decades after his father was in the ground.

_You see more than you see, you worthless shit. You see so much more than you think you see. Your eyes take it all in, every bit of it, and it's only your mind that fucks it up later, because we let our minds grow lazy right from the cradle. You see_ everything. _It's only a matter of finding it once it's seen._

He saw the map, yes. He saw it very well. It was there. Behind his eyes, it was there.

"I saw it," he breathed. "Enough. Other end of the walkway out there, there's a room. Door. Stairs. 'nother hallway. More stairs. 'nother door. That's it. That's it." He was breathing hard, he realized, as if he had been running. Panting with the sheer effort of _seeing_. Beside him, Beth stiffened.

"You're sure."

"Yar. Very sure."

"Alright." He actually felt her smile, her lips against his jaw. "Say thankya."

"Not like I was doin' you a favor."

Beth didn't answer. He could tell she was thinking, as if it vibrated through the air. Her hand was still on his hip and it tightened slightly.

"You don't have but two more bolts, and I don't think you got two good arms to aim the thing. You're gonna have to use your guns." The words were hard, pointed, and he remembered the question she had asked. "Why _don't_ you use 'em? Tell me that. I don't care if it _don't_ please ya one bit. You tell me now. I know you _can,_ so why don't you?"

Everything in him shrank away, folded in on itself. He had bid her not push, had bid her back away when he told her to do so. But that had been in the light - firelight, with the promise of daylight to come. This was another world, a world in which he was weak, practically helpless, and only a few inches and probably an hour or two from her holding him like a newborn child.

And he couldn't keep it from her forever. He knew he couldn't keep _anything_ from her forever.

Sooner or later she would have it all.

"We live through this, I'll tell ya true," he said, and he found some strength to put into the words. "I swear it. By the face of my father, I do."

"But you will," she persisted. "You'll use 'em."

His gut a ball of ice, he nodded, and knew she felt it.

"Alright." She settled against him, and he relaxed into something that was more exhaustion than anything else. But it wouldn't let him go. Another thing, hard and sharp, painful in an entirely new way. Digging into his chest and the base of his throat, twisting into a knot.

"And you're gonna leave me."

She tensed and he felt her lift her head, though of course she could see nothing. "Cry pardon?"

"If you have to. If it comes to that. You're gonna leave me behind. You swear it."

She was silent a long time. He let her be so. He was torn, ripped right down the middle in a way the eyeless thing never could have done. He wanted her to swear, _needed_ her to swear, because the thought of her dying here in the darkness because of him was more than he could ever hope for the strength to bear.

And he was also howling inside, screaming for her not to leave him behind, to never leave him, because he had been with her less than a week but he had been with her so much longer than that, had been traveling for twenty years to find his way back to her, and he couldn't be without her again. Not alive, and not dead.

He thought of Merle, watching Merle beaten and bleeding because of Daryl's own error, and he thought of the awful, all-consuming loyalty that had been born in those moments. To give anything to protect. To give anything to hold onto and not let go.

"No," she said, and he felt his eyes burning with fresh tears.

He slept again.

_~_

He was still half unconscious when she helped him stand, the lantern light setting his eyes and head to ache. He wavered, teetered, almost fell, but she slid her shoulder under his arm and bore him up with much more strength than he would have thought she had. She walked him to the wall and leaned him against it, then went back for the gunna, the light, his crossbow. This last she handed to him. "I can't carry both."

He took the bow and managed to get it over his shoulder. Poking out of the top of her boot, in a burst of strange clarity, he saw the handle of the knife and felt a little steadier. He could walk. He thought. Not well, but he could. Maybe for as long as he would need to.

After... He just didn't know.

She slung the sack over her own shoulder, then bent, pulled out the knife and tucked it into the waistband of her jeans. Not perfect, but better. She straightened up and looked at him, and again she seemed both ancient and an entirely new thing, a being emerged from the raw chaos of the Prim at the beginning of all the worlds.

_Dan-tete._

"You ready?"

No. He wasn't. He nodded.

Beth opened the door.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again no notes to speak of except to say yet again that I appreciate so much the people who are reading/commenting, because this thing is rapidly becoming a thing of my heart, which I'm enjoying almost as if I wasn't writing it, and it means a huge amount to know that I'm not enjoying it alone. 
> 
> Through the door.

 

 

6

 

There was nothing. No sound. No light but for the one Beth held. She stood in the doorway for almost a full minute, listening. Closing her eyes, removing every other distraction. There was only Daryl's pained, labored breathing and the rush of blood in her own ears.  
  
It wasn't a question of whether something was waiting in the dark to kill them. Something was. The only question was when it would come.  
  
And how many of them there would be.  
  
She glanced back. Daryl had pushed away from the wall and was standing on his own. He was still swaying, and keeping his feet was clearly taking some considerable effort, but he was doing it, and she felt a rush of relief deeper than she was willing to let show. Because she had been so certain. So firm. For him. Because every instinct told her it was what he needed now.  
  
But looking at him in the dimness when she first bandaged his wound, looking at the blood soaking through the cloth and at the exhaustion on his face, she had doubted. She had doubted everything.  
  
Doubt didn't matter, and faith only had to last them so far. She extended her hand to him and after a few uncertain seconds he took it - and his hand was cold. She remembered those first few moments in the dark, when she had been somehow beyond fear and somewhere beyond lost, and he had reached for her and found her and given her ground on which to stand.  
  
She threaded their fingers together and found a smile for him, gave it to him. "C'mon."  
  
The thing she had stabbed was still crumpled on the floor, black blood all around it in smears and little puddles. They didn't stop, but she looked down as they passed and saw its eyeless face, the smoothness marred by two thin slits where its nose should have been, its wide mouth lined with two rows of tiny, needle-sharp teeth.  
  
Perhaps it had been human once. Once, in a past so distant no one alive would remember it.  
  
They left the control room, and the cavernous blackness of the enormous hall swallowed them again.  
  
This time she was aware - in a way she hadn't been before - of how loud their footfalls were against the metal of the catwalk. The impacts of their boots made it sound almost like a dull, clanking bell, and it creaked and squeaked as it gave slightly under their weight. She didn't think the things could sense their light, but anything anywhere near them must hear them, and her imagination was a gibbering thing, offering her countless giddy fantasies of hundreds of the creatures all around them, clinging to the walls like spiders, creeping along the catwalk's underside, silent and watching and ready to tear them apart.  
  
She shoved these images away. Maybe they were true. It didn't matter. Even if they were, she could do nothing but keep going, Daryl's hand held tightly in hers, her faith placed in him and in what he said he remembered and in what she had told him.  
  
 _We're not gonna die down here._  
  
Daryl could walk. Not quickly, and now and then out of the corner of her vision she saw him start to lean heavily on the rail, then remember that it was his injured side and pull his hand away. So he had to lean on her, as much as he could, but he refused to let go of her hand. He was already weakening, she could tell - dangerously so. Maybe too much. But there was strength in his hand where it gripped hers, and in what someone else might have seen as a childish thing - a grown man of some full years walking hand in hand with a girl probably young enough to be his daughter - Beth felt fierce determination.  
  
Something had kept him alive all these years. Maybe that something wasn't so much anything that lay within him as it was a willingness to reach for and grab whatever there was to grab onto.  
  
She loved him. It came back to her all in a rush, as solid and real as his fingers twined in hers. She didn't know how or why, or what manner of love it was, and it didn't matter. At the farm she knew and she knew it still: she loved him, and she loved what he was doing now.  
  
Trying.

She wasn't sure what she would have done without that contact, without his hand to hold. She could be strong now - she could be strong for _him_ \- but she also knew that if she had to be alone in this darkness it would devour her, probably before the beasts that waited inside it could take her. But she wanted to ask him for more, wanted him to speak to her, let her know that he was with her not only in body but in mind. That he was still at least half alert. That if he had to he could still use the guns.

Gun, probably. Not both, not with the state his shoulder was in. But she had seen a glimpse of what he could do with only one, and she thought it might be enough.

She wanted him to talk to her, and she supposed they were already making enough noise that a little more wouldn't matter. But somehow she couldn't. Her throat locked up and her breath froze in her chest. So she merely held his hand, squeezed it tighter, and led him through the dark.

She lost track of how long they walked. It seemed to go on forever. More than once the lantern flickered alarmingly, the light wavering and nearly going out, but then it burned steadier and she could breathe again. At last the echo of their movement changed and she sensed some kind of obstruction ahead, sending their sound back to them in a new way.

If it was a wall, it would have to be the end of the catwalk. The end of it, and the door. Her pulse picked up speed; it didn't quite race but thudded through her a little faster. The door, the room, the stairs... She wasn't sure she remembered. It felt as if they had been in the dark forever. But Daryl would. Daryl would have to.

"Daryl?"

He responded with a quiet, rough noise - something between a groan and a grunt - not quite a word, but it was enough. She squeezed his hand again and pressed closer. "Almost there."

They reached the wall. The door stood in front of them, and though the lantern's light turned all colors to the same sallow hues, she could tell it was bright red, undiminished by age. Over it, the letters standing out clear and sharp even with the dust, was one word.

EXIT

Carefully, cautiously, she released Daryl's hand and stepped forward. There was a handle, and set above it there was a small square almost completely covered in rows of tiny numbered buttons. She peered at it, holding up the lantern, and tried the handle.

Nothing.

She tried it again. Again. It turned and she heard what might be the click of a catch releasing, but the door itself wouldn't open. Wouldn't budge. She pushed, pushed harder, jerked at it. The handle rattled, but nothing else gave. She tried the buttons, tried a few of them, a few more in different combinations - and them all of them at once, mashing her entire palm against them as if sufficient pressure alone might be the last missing piece of the puzzle.

Nothing.

Her entire body went cold and she glanced back at Daryl. He was staring at her, leaning on the railing with his good arm, his shoulders hunched. She saw that he was trembling very slightly, all over, and she knew it might be mere exhaustion.

Or it might be more than that.

"It's locked," she murmured, but that much must be obvious. He pulled in a hard breath and seemed to be looking for internal steel to brace himself with, bone and muscle. She could tell he was pulling himself back, ready to rush forward, and she guessed what he meant to do and stepped hurriedly in front of him.

" _No,_ you goddamn idiot. You'll make yourself bleed again, don't you dare."

"Gotta," he said, and his features twisted with desperation. "Beth, we gotta..."

_We gotta go, Beth. We gotta go._

"We'll figure it out. We'll..." She moved closer to him, laid a gentle hand on his good shoulder - and then against his face, against his jaw, and his skin was clammy. "Do you remember anythin' else? From the map? Anythin' at all?"

"Should've taken it," he whispered. "Why the fuck didn't we take it? So what if it fell apart? What'd we have to lose?"

He sounded almost ready to cry, and her gut wrenched. Something was happening. Something was teetering, cracking, parts of it crumbling away into disaster. It was bigger than her, bigger than them, bigger than the darkness. For the first time, looking at Daryl's face - _except perhaps it was not the first time_ \- Beth caught a glimpse of something else beyond them that was terribly, terribly wrong.

Daryl knew what it was. Knew and wasn't telling her.

"Daryl..." She leaned in, almost tipping their foreheads together - and with a final flicker the lantern went out.

And the screams rose all around them.

~

Nothing came for them.

Not then.

~

For a moment the two of them simply stood, not daring to breathe, not _able_ to breathe, as the chorus of screams died away. No more followed. The silence slipped back down like a curtain, and Beth didn't remove her hand, and she felt Daryl take a huge, shuddering breath.

She didn't need to review their options. There were two. They could stay where they were, and probably die.

They could move, and probably die.

"Do you remember?" she repeated softly. "Anythin' else?"

For a moment he didn't respond at all. She could feel him trying, could feel the sheer force of his effort, radiating from him like heat. Then, slowly, once, he shook his head.

 _Alright._ "Alright," she said, still soft, and she wanted to pull him to her, hold onto him, tell him it wasn't his fault, she didn't blame him, she knew he was trying.

 _Holding onto him then, pressing her cheek against his back, feeling him shaking in the circle of her arms. Feeling him letting go and knowing after so long, knowing that she was strong enough to be what he needed, strong enough to take care of him, because he needed_ her, _because she was all he had left._

_All he had left in the dark._

"C'mon," she whispered, and she led him into the blackness.

~

What can be said about that nightmare journey through the dark? Where are the words to describe the utter terror of it, the cloud of fear that came to them and settled around them as they walked, swirling like smoke, so thick she could almost feel it when she put out her hand, searching in front of her for anything with which they might collide, anything over which they might trip - all the while half expecting to feel her fingers bitten and torn away, prelude to the rest of her? How can I tell you what it was like, how she felt the ground falling away from her with every step until every one of those steps was another step over the edge of an abyss, the entire world waiting to swallow them up? How can I say what it was to feel his hand in hers, clutching her, his breath coming fast and shallow with pain and fear, which rushed through that touch and into her even as she gave hers back to him?

What I can tell you is that in that darkness, in that fear, they did not let go of each other. I can tell you that in a cold and lonely hell, they found each other at last.

~

There is a time when the fear of the coming of a thing is worse than the thing itself, and that fear is what found them as they moved from metal down to concrete, creeping through a space so wide and empty and echoing that it was as if the entire world abandoned them to drift in the nothingness that existed before the raw stuff of the Prim spat out the first gods and the making of the world.

There were more screams. Not long after the first, as they stumbled down the metal stairs, not near to them but harsh and piercing and cracking open the dark. Even through the ice in her gut and chest she tried to count them, to get a sense of where they were, and before she could say, Daryl whispered to her, his mouth very close to her ear.

"Six. Think. Maybe seven."

That seemed right. She nodded, though she realized a second later that he couldn't see. Really, it didn't matter how many there were. They couldn't stop. Even though she had no idea what they were moving toward, with no plan, with no idea of direction, with every probability that they would simply wander blindly until the creatures finally took them.

But nothing did. She heard faint movement - or what she thought must be - distantly, but the screams died away into silence once more. They continued and her free hand settled over the handle of the knife at her waist. She knew it would likely do her little good now, but it was what she had.

That, and him.

"We're not gonna die down here," she murmured, as much to herself as to him, and she heard him laugh.

~

At some point he stumbled and before she could do anything to help him he fell, letting out a rough cry of pain as he did. She whirled, dropped beside him and groped for him - finding his shoulder, his face, his arm and his hand. She said his name and felt him nod, and he reached for her. He was no longer clammy; he was _hot_ and his forehead was damp with sweat, and she understood that fever was already taking him.

She got him on his feet and they walked on.

She felt things, now and then. She felt bars of cold metal, some kind of frame or perhaps a pipe, and felt along it until there was a wall, which she followed. She was looking for another door, for _anything,_ and she was so weary but she didn't dare stop.

Then he fell again, and this time she couldn't get him up.

As she helped him lean back against the wall the screams cut through the dark, and they were closer. She gritted her teeth and sat down beside him, her hand closing around his, and he let out a ragged groan.

"Told you to leave me."

"Said no."

"Beth." He coughed, an awful dry sound. "You gotta..." This time it was more of a laugh, though still awful and still dry. "You always gotta be like this."

Something stiffened in her, tightened, and she knew he was right but she had no idea _how._ "Like what?"

"Always arguin' with me. Always give me a hard fuckin' time. Told you they were dead, you didn't listen. Made me play that stupid goddamn game."

"Daryl..." She shook her head, but even as she did she curled an arm gently around his shoulders and pulled him against her, and she thought about the cool of the glass jar in her hand, the horrible-wonderful taste of what was in it and how, in some impossibly strange way, it had been exactly what she needed, and he had known that.

If only she had it now.

_I wish I could feel like this all the time. That's bad._

She closed her eyes.

Not that it made any difference.

~

_Tell me a story._

_The fuck, girl? Story?_

_Yeah. Tell me anythin'. Just... God, Daryl, just talk to me, do it please ya. Just say somethin'. I don't care what it is._

Him shifting, his boots shuffling against the concrete. Walking, or still leaning against the wall? The minutes and hours are running together and she isn't sure anymore. The Beams are breaking, and she feels doubled, tripled; there are too many of her. Fire in the dark, always fire, and there are doors within doors within doors.

_Daryl, please._

He's wordless. Breathing. There are screams again, then silence. She hardly cares anymore; she has the distinct feeling that this isn't hunting in any direct sense but another strategy. They've lost one of their own; they'll be careful now. They're using terror, letting it burn away all his and her will, exhaust them until they're half dead anyway and easy kills.

Or this is revenge by way of torture. In either case the result is the same.

 _You want a story?_ His voice is a little stronger. Some time ago she gave him the last of the sour fruit - not the jerky, not the salt. But she thinks it helped. _Alright._

So he tells her of Arthur Eld, of the first King of All-World, the great unifier and the first of the line of gunslingers. He tells her of Arthur's coronation, of the coming and the gifts and the subsequent betrayal of Maerlyn, of the battle that ensued. He tells her of the sword Excaliber and its reforging into ancient guns. He tells her in broken fragments, not entirely sensible, not in any real order, but she understands enough of it. He tells her of nobility and honor, of things long faded and lost to time, and she feels the grief and the anger in him without fully understanding where it comes from.

And he approaches other things without quite reaching them. She senses it, knows he must be close to delirium but still with enough presence of mind to turn away from what he doesn't want her to know. He begins to speak and trails off, and rather than push him she pulls him through the blackness, through the waves of screaming, but one thing he does say stays with her, digs itself into her like a poisonous insect burrowing into her skin and remains there.

_The Crimson King._

And she understands that this is not a story at all.

~

He falls again. She expects this, has in fact been surprised that it hasn't happened sooner, and when he does she kneels, sits, pulls him into her arms and cradles him. He did not save her, she knows. Or he did, yes, but she saved him as well, even if they die here she saved him, and it has always been that way and always will be. Outside the shack she saw all his pain and rage and grief and when he tried to turn it on her she bore up under it and was not moved. She was something to which he could cling.

Then, she was.

_We're not gonna die down here._

_But you're gonna miss me so bad when I'm gone, Daryl Dixon._

She holds him in her arms and she sings in the dark, drowning out the chorus of screams. She sings to him, a song she's never heard before but knows so well.

_you build it up, you wreck it down_  
 _you burn your mansion to the ground_  
 _when there's nothing left to keep you here,_  
 _when you're falling behind in this big blue world_  
  
 _you got to hold on, hold on_  
 _you got to hold on_  
 _take my hand, I'm standing right here_  
 _you got to hold on_

He touches her face, traces her features with trembling fingers. When they reach her lips she kisses them.

_~_

He knows he's in love with her.

He thinks he could die happy, knowing that.

~

They found the open door quite suddenly, and the stairs and the room beyond.

Beth bit back her excitement. It was an exhausted kind of excitement, barely worthy of the word, and she knew it was foolish to let it come, but it came anyway - not because she thought it was truly a chance at a way out but because it was something besides the monotonous horror of the featureless darkness. She felt the outline of the doorway, felt open air, and tugged Daryl along a little harder as she groped her way through.

She knew he was exhausted far beyond her, knew every step for him was an unspeakable victory, but she wouldn't leave him behind. Not then. Not ever. And as she felt their way along another wall and found the metal railing and the first step, the excitement transformed into something far worse.

Hope.

It wasn't the stairs that led to the catwalk. She was sure of it. This wasn't that open vastness; this was a small room and a small stairwell, and she could feel it wasn't empty. There were things in the dark. Twice she almost tripped over something oddly caught between soft and hard, and she knew it might be another corpse, but as before she no longer cared.

Up to a landing, turning to another stairway and up that as well - longer, higher. Daryl was panting hard behind her, uneven, labored, but she was ruthless and she led him on, caught him by the arm when he nearly fell again.

The stairway ended in another open door.

She groped their way into it. This room was larger, and like the one before it was not empty; she could hear now by the differences in the quality of the echoes, almost make out the shapes of things. She felt another desk against a wall, more buttons, the cool smoothness of one of those squares of inset glass - a huge one, she thought, or it seemed that way. And then, against another wall, she touched a face and almost let out a shout of surprise.

But it wasn't alive. It hadn't ever been. She could tell by the feel of it: nothing like skin, though it gave slightly under her touch. She ran her hand over it - and knew what it was when she felt the enormous, round glass eyes and long snout, and shivered. One of the masks she had seen before.

It wasn't alive. It couldn't hurt them.

But there was more. She didn't shout, bit back this new fear and held tight to Daryl's hand, but the faces she was touching were now much more human, their closed mouths, their brows, cheeks, eyes. Not flesh, she was certain of that, but...

How many? How many of them in here, arrayed around them? Watching them with dead gazes, marking their passage? It didn't matter that they couldn't hurt her, couldn't hurt him. Suddenly she wanted to run.

Wanted to let go of Daryl, let him fall one final time, and run.

And this time when the screams came they were close, and the hunt was almost over.

~

She had no idea how it happened. It was all a blur of sound and blackness and then light, bizarre light, a flash so bright it left opaque colored blotches on her vision. A sound like thunder, a roar and a crack both together, and when she realized that Daryl was no longer holding her hand she knew what it was.

She saw in another brilliant flash, just as she saw the eyeless thing hurtle backward, its head an explosion of blood and pink brains. She saw _him,_ saw his face, saw what he had summoned from inside himself, everything he had told her he wasn't and everything he was.

He shot another, another, picking them out of the dark with inhuman accuracy. No wild shots, no misses. Each one was a blaze of death, beautiful death, and it froze her and stole her breath away.

Froze her, even as her hand was moving, because now she was standing on his bad side, his useless arm, and her body knew what to do even if her mind did not, and she reached for his holster and took his other gun from him.

It felt perfect in her hand. Massive, so heavy she almost couldn't believe she could lift it let alone aim, and when she pulled back the hammer and fired the first shot she was sure, for a split second, that the kick had simply broken her wrist. But it hadn't.

It hadn't done that at all.

~

_The hawk._

It circled through the top of Daryl's mind, calm, cold, seeing everything. He knew where to aim, when to fire, because this had been in his eye and mind and heart for three decades and in his blood since his birth. Thought was unnecessary. The hot agony and death that had gathered itself around him was unimportant and couldn't touch him. He _was_ death, death in his hands and heart, dealing in lead - a creature of _fly_ and _dive_ and _kill_. And there was a kind of savage joy in what he was doing that would have been hateful to him...

And to which he now surrendered with a deep eagerness he hadn't wanted to believe was there.

But there was something else.

His attention was too narrow for him to be fully aware of it, but there was another shot ringing out with his own, in harmony with it, a duet, and he knew it wasn't him because there was only one gun and one hand. And that was when he saw her lit up by her own gunfire, aiming with both hands and picking her targets with smooth perfection, and he knew what she was doing.

Aiming with the light thrown by his shots. Aiming in that sliver of time between darkness and darkness.

_I aim with my eye._

_Gunslinger. By all the faces of all my fathers, my God, she's a born gunslinger._

His savage joy was joined by an equally savage love, and Daryl smiled.

~

It was when the thing leaped at her, struck her shoulder a glancing blow and tumbled her back against the wall, that she saw the other door.

It was only a second. Then she hit the desk so hard that pain and then numbness shivered all through her side, her elbow slammed downward - _don't drop the gun, sweet Man Jesus don't drop the gun -_ and the room blared into bright, noisy life.

She saw what she had imagined and feared - faces and human figures, life-size _dolls_ , dozens of them all around, some piled in corners and some appearing to hang from the very walls, smiling placidly at her as if they were pleased to see her. She saw four, five of the eyeless creatures cringing back, mouths wide and hissing. She saw Daryl still aiming and shooting, though some part of her had counted his shots and knew he was at his last one or two bullets. She saw all of this in waves of red light, and over it all she heard a calm female voice speaking in pleasant tones as if bidding them welcome and both long days and pleasant nights.

_"This is a level one alert. Repeat, this is a level one alert. All personnel are to report to designated shelters immediately. All personnel are to report to designated shelters immediately. This is a level one alert. Repeat-"_

And then there was the other door and the EXIT set above it.

She had no idea if it was locked - couldn't see if there was one of those button-squares set into it. She didn't care. Everything - _everything -_ was here in this moment, and she knew that if she died here, now, with him, somehow she would be dying as she truly was, and that was all right.

That was a fine thing to do.

She shouted his name. He turned just as he spent what she knew was his last shell. There were more of the creatures flooding through the open door, shrieking in rage and triumph, and the dolls watched it all with mild enjoyment, as if observing a moderately amusing play.

She hurled herself against the door, turning the knob as she did, and it opened. He followed her through.

She was already falling. She twisted her body wildly around and kicked at the door as she did, and she saw both Daryl falling with her and the door slamming shut behind them. It sounded thick, heavy, and the screams were only faint, barely audible at all, and the door did not open again.

Cold concrete against her cheek. She let out a flooding breath that was half sobbing and half laughter. The gun was still clutched in her hand.

Darkness.

No. _No._

Beth screamed. She screamed louder, harder, more vicious than the eyeless things had ever screamed. It was an animal sound, all bitter fury, and it was heavy with all the weight of years and worlds, and it raked claws up and down her throat until she was sure she was bleeding. She screamed, and as she did she rolled onto her back, and the scream died into silence as she stared at what was there.

Turning over them, still and cold and brilliant, were thousands upon thousands of stars.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yet again, this one comes quickly. I should say that this is the chapter I've been waiting to write for a while. There are a variety of reasons for this. I hope they've all worked out the way I meant them to. 
> 
> Once more, reader, thankya for being here. <3

 

 

7

 

It was dawn when Beth finally made a fire.

For a long time she simply lay there outside the door, listening to Daryl's ragged breathing and staring up at the stars. She was unable to feel anything, unable even to move - the simple fact of the stars' existence took up all her thought and almost all her awareness. They were literally unbelievable: she doubted them. She counted them, marked the ones she knew, traced the outlines of familiar constellations in her mind, and still she doubted them. This might be one more trick of the darkness. This might be utter madness finally taking her. Or it might be some magic of whoever built this place, the makers of impossible sheets of glass and voices that spoke out of thin air and masks for use in unspeakable rituals.

But no. No, they were real. They were real, and soon the dawn would come.

At last she sat up, returning to herself, newly aware of the gun she still clutched in her hand. She looked down at it, the blue-silver sheen of its steel in the starlight, and then she remembered Daryl - _Daryl_ \- and scrambled to her knees. He was there a few feet away from her, nothing more than a dark form crumpled on the concrete slab on which they had emerged, and she felt a new sliver of fear.

But he was breathing. He was.

Not well, not easily, but he was.

She went to him. She felt his heat before she touched him, but when she laid her hands on him he was shivering violently, though the night was only cool, and when she bent closer and said his name he didn't answer her. What he had done - the gun, the death in his eyes, and the utter cold precision in the way he had dealt out that death in lead...

It had taken everything from him. Everything he had left.

She laid down the gunna sack and sat beside him for a while, her hand on his uninjured shoulder, and looked at the stars and tried to think what to do.

They needed water. _He_ needed water. Of the things she could reasonably get for him, he probably needed that most of all. She fetched the canteen from the sack and bent to him again, her lips against his cheek. He stilled for a moment, then turned a little toward her, and in the starlight she saw his eyes were open and he was looking at her. Aware of her, at least a bit.

"I'm gonna look for water," she said softly. "I'll come back."

As she rose and turned away, she remembered that the last time she said that to a wounded man she had later watched him burn alive.

~

She found water in a cluster of pines, a short way from the concrete slab. It was a small spring coming straight out of a rock outcropping, and she thought of the lake and the poison in it and was half certain she was filling the canteen with death, but when she drank - so fast she was nearly sick - it tasted fresh and clean and almost sweet, and she decided they really had nothing left to lose.

The slab itself - and the door - were set not directly against another outcrop but instead a much larger building of the same make as the bunker through which they had entered the mountain. It was taller - at least two levels, she thought - but it appeared to be mostly in ruins, and in the dimness it looked every bit the evil place she knew it was. She would have preferred to go, to get as far from it as she could. The creatures might still be able to get out, might still come for them. But she knew it wasn't so. They were of that darkness and wouldn't leave it, not even to emerge into the light of stars.

They were free of the dark, she thought as she returned to the slab, the canteen heavy in her hand. But Daryl was not free of the fever. It had him now, and in its way it was far more deadly than the darkness itself had been.

She couldn't move the way she wanted to, no. As she tipped Daryl's head up so he could drink, as he felt the shivers still wracking him, the heat coming off him like he himself was a fire, that much was clear to her. He couldn't crawl now, let alone find his feet and walk. They would have to stay here.

Here, on this bare patch of ground, he would heal or he would die.

Beth would simply have to wait for one.

Or the other.

~

She gathered what kindling she could find in the waning light of the stars and the faint glow of dawn, some larger sticks, and brought them back. There weren't much, but pines were all around them and stuff for fire was one thing about which she didn't think they needed to worry. She knew how to build fires in general, but here she did exactly as she had seen him do - a careful construction to allow for specific flow of air and the falling of coals - and as she struck the flint she murmured the words she had heard him say that first night on the road.

_Spark-a-dark, where's my sire? Will I lay me? Will I stay me? Bless this camp with fire._

The camp - such as it was - was blessed accordingly, and Beth waited a few moments until she was sure the fire would stay high and hot for a time. Then she turned back to Daryl and helped him shift a little closer to the heat.

His own heat had not abated, and looking at him, she tried desperately to remember everything she knew about treating a fever. He shouldn't be left uncovered - the traveling clothes under the poncho he had worn were relatively light, merely trousers and a leather vest over a rough-spun workshirt of the kind a farmhand might wear. But the poncho was gone, abandoned on the bank of the poisoned lake, and there was nothing to be done about that now.

Unless she wanted to search through the horrible ruins for something else, there was nothing to cover him with.

She hesitated for a moment. Then, seizing on the only thing she could think of, she picked up the gunna sack and spilled out its contents with a clatter.

She saw a jumble of small things, some of which she recognized and some of which puzzled her, but she did see a spare shirt - just one - and there was the sack itself, which was barely large enough to cover anything but which would be better than nothing at all. What she felt wasn't quite gratitude as she turned back to him with these things - far from it - but she was willing to be thankful for every single advantage she could find.

To the Man Jesus? She was no longer certain.

The darkness had shaken her in more ways than one.

Somehow she managed to get the shirt around him - not _on_ him, not wearing it, but wrapped around his shoulders and giving him a little extra protection from not only the air but the chill of the ground. She laid the sack under his head instead of draping it over him, and when this was done she considered again. If she could find something to make a bed for him - long grass of some kind, thick leaves, anything to give him more cover.

And a little more comfort. Any she could give. Because she knew about fevers not only in theory but from experience; when she was small she had taken a tumble from a tree and sent a spike of stray wood straight into her arm. Her father had cleaned and bound the wound as best he could, but infection had set in anyway, and for days she lay, confused and burning and in pain, while her body fought off the invader.

Pain was coming for him. More than he had suffered until now.

She gave him a little more water, and then - because he needed to eat and there was nothing else to give him, she pressed some of the jerky to his lips and he accepted it.

She ate some of it herself, trying to ignore the sting of the salt on her lips and tongue and the inside of her cheeks. This was something else she was going to have to look for - he needed more than this. He needed nourishment, real nourishment, and there was none.

She had laid the gun beside him. She looked at it for a long time in silence, and the sun rose through the trees and the day warmed.

"Take it."

Beth started. Without meaning to she had begun to doze. It had been a long time, she realized, since she had truly slept; time had been lost in the dark, and they had been there for hours upon hours - or it might have been days. She sensed it was this last, but had no idea how many. It couldn't be too many. Daryl would be dead now if it had been more than two at most. Of thirst if nothing else.

She looked down at him. Once again his eyes were open and he was staring up at her, and while his face was pale but for the bright red spots standing out on his cheeks, he was sharply aware.

"Take it," he repeated, his voice a rough croak, and weakly nudged the gun with his good hand. "You know how to use it. I saw."

She shook her head - but it was reflex, and even as she did she wondered why. Because he was right: she _did_ know. She knew as deeply and as fundamentally as breathing. She might not be as practiced as him, might not ( _yet)_ have his skill, but she knew how to aim, to shoot.

She knew how to kill.

She picked up the gun, and as before she was struck hard by how well it fit her hand, despite its size and weight. How it was as if she was recovering a lost part of herself she had forgotten was gone. She looked back at him, and his eyes were still bright and clear.

"Check it. See how many rounds."

She opened the cylinder and peered at it. "Three."

He coughed, a sharp rasp. "Good." His good hand moved again, fumbled at his gunbelts, then fell to his side. "More here. Take 'em. Reload. You need it all."

She moved mostly without thinking. What she knew, wherever it came from, she could tell that if she thought too much about it she would second-guess herself, get in her own way. Obscure it with her own doubts. All she needed to do was to _do_ it, and it would follow. So she took the rounds from his belt and reloaded the gun, snapped the cylinder closed, and it sent a kind of warm satisfaction all through her that she didn't understand and wasn't sure she wanted to.

_Packing iron. Dealing in lead._

"Take the belt," Daryl said, and now his voice was fading, the words more slurred. He had dragged himself up out of his own internal darkness, she could tell, done it with this last burst of strength in order to tell her what she needed to know, to give these things to her. Not that she needed permission - she would do whatever she had to do and he would be well aware of that. But he was giving it to her all the same. It was all there in what he _wasn't_ saying, and she felt it like a touch.

Because he wasn't just giving these things to her to keep them both safe. He was passing them along to her to keep for herself, if needed, because if he left her there would be no one else to take them.

And suddenly, feeling the enormous weight of the gun in her hand, she wasn't certain she wanted them.

She took the gunbelt with the empty holster, pushed up to her knees and strapped it around herself - not at her waist but low on her hip as she had seen him do. Like the gun, it felt frighteningly _right,_ and for a few seconds she was lost in that feeling. But when he raised a hand and beckoned her she bent to him again.

He reached up and touched her face, her cheek, her brow, and combed his hand into her hair. He smiled at her, and for once there was no pain in that smile. He was all sickness, all exhaustion beyond anything she had ever felt, but when he smiled that way, at her, Daryl was radiant.

In that smile, in that touch, was terrible love.

"You did well," he breathed, and she knew he wasn't only talking about the gun. "You remembered the face of your father."

She laid her hand over his and closed her eyes.

They stayed like that for a time, the rising sun bathing them both in warmth. He was quiet and he no longer trembled. She could tell he was still with her, still himself, and she could tell it might be the last time. And if she wept for him in those moments, she did not know it.

Then his hand went limp and slipped away from hers. The shivers returned to him, his breathing once again shallow and strained, and she let him go and gazed down at him.

There were a few things she could do for him now. She could try to make him drink, try to feed him, try to keep him warm. She could look for any plants or herbs she recognized as having some healing properties, though she didn't hold much hope of that. She could be with him and hold onto him, and she could try to have faith.

But that was all.

Daryl fell into his darkness. Beth's long vigil began.

~

It was as it had been before in the dark, only it wasn't dark. But the light, though it didn't contain that same creeping horror, had a way of making everything just as much like a dream. Beth tried to stay focused, tried to keep her mind on what she needed to do - keep the fire going, return to the spring for water, look for greens or fruit or meat as she passed through the trees. Of meat there seemed to be none, not even birds, and she didn't think she could leave Daryl for as long as it might take to go further into the forest to hunt. And there were the wolf-things, though she had heard no howls, and in any case if those things found them it would make little difference.

She did find berries, small purple clusters of seeds surrounded by flesh that was surprisingly sweet. As with the water it occurred to her that she might be eating poison, and as before she didn't care. She brought back as many as she could carry in her shirt, leaves as well, and ate as much as she reasonably could, feeding Daryl whatever he seemed able to take.

But that wasn't much. His body might still be present, and for the moment he might still be breathing, but the rest of him was gone. When he ate he barely managed it at all and she could only give him a little at a time for fear of choking him. Water was easier, but even that was becoming increasingly difficult, and his breathing was growing more and more labored, clearly taking more and more effort.

Twice she unwrapped the wound and examined it, and twice she tried to clean it with a strip of her own shirt and a little of the water, but she knew it was useless. There was no cleaning out what was in him now, and the torn flesh was a horrible angry red, oozing dark blood and stinking pus, and crimson lines were spreading out into the skin that surrounded it.

She remembered her father once looking at a hunting dog who had caught its foreleg on a bit of wire and torn itself badly; by the time its owner had decided it was worth examining, the dog's wound looked very much like Daryl's did now. Her father had presented the owner with two choices: the leg could be cut off, or the dog could be put down.

It hadn't been a difficult decision.

It was ridiculous. It would kill him for sure. She couldn't do surgery, and it wasn't even a limb that could be removed. But for half a moment Beth considered Daryl's knife.

The hours of daylight passed and bled into night. Daryl's shivering grew more violent, and while before he had mostly been quiet, now he began to talk, and to do so incessantly. In the depths of that fever he talked more in an hour than she heard since she met him, sometimes only incomprehensible mutters, sometimes shouts and awful cries. She sat by the fire, feeding it and listening to him, half of her nearly entranced by it and the other half wishing she could stop up her ears.

He talked to her, called her names she didn't know. Sometimes - often - he seemed convinced she was someone named Merle, and he was alternately bewildered and pleading and pleased by this, sometimes thanking her when she gave him water and sometimes trying to push her away with strength he didn't have. Merle, she began to believe, might be his brother, and that explained a few things.

He called her other names; sometimes he called her Walter - and that at least was familiar - but other times he said names she didn't know, said things to those absent people that sometimes almost made sense and more often made no sense at all. For a while he thought she was someone named Carol and was afraid for her and also angry, and once or twice he said the name _Roland_ and that chilled her in a way she didn't understand and did not at all like. He cried rage at someone named _Marten._

And, so soft she almost couldn't hear it, his voice tight with terror, he whispered another name that seemed to blot out the very stars.

_Flagg._

She sat close to him and at last she held him, tried to calm his shuddering, tried to help him rest and to take some rest herself. But she only managed half sleep, and he pressed against her and tried to hold onto her and sleep eluded him too.

The stars faded and the sun rose, and it began all over again.

Halfway through what she thought must be the second day, she knew that - despite the water, despite the little food she had found - she was weakening as well. It wasn't sickness, not exactly - he hadn't given hers to her, and she hadn't picked up any other, and the water and the berries had proved safe. But she was weary beyond all reckoning, and also deeply hungry, and she knew there might come a time - perhaps soon - when she couldn't do any more for him and still keep herself alive.

_Leave me behind. Swear it._

_No._

But she considered it. If he was lucid he would be telling her to do it, insisting, perhaps begging her. It made sense. There was every probability that he wouldn't emerge on the other side of this. Every hour he was weaker. Every hour the poison in the wound ate more of him. Soon there would be nothing left of him. Very likely she was now only wasting her time with him.

She considered it for a minute. Then she shoved it away and didn't touch it again.

Hours passed. Darkness fell once more. She drifted through the routine of fire, water, what little food there was - running out, now - then fire and water again, bathing Daryl’s forehead with wet rags, trying to soothe him when he seemed frightened, which was more and more frequently. He was no longer angry or belligerent, no longer finding strength to shout weakly. He only muttered, whispered - and in those whispers she heard something more terrifying than anything he had yet said.

_Tower. Dark Tower._

_All roads lead to the Tower._

Another dawn and more light, swelling and hurting her eyes, and when the sun slid down toward afternoon on that last day he began to quiet, to go still. The waves of shivering lessened and finally went away altogether. If she didn't know the way of fever she might have thought he was getting better, but the heat that poured from him was only increasing, and she knew what it was.

She knew he was dying.

She left the fire, left the water, went to him and pulled him into her arms. She held him and stroked his damp hair back from his face, kissed his brow and his swollen eyes and then, softly, his mouth. She didn't cry.

_I don't cry anymore, Daryl._

The sun fell toward the horizon, making long shadows of the trees, and she sang to him again. Nothing in particular, no one song all the way through, but snatches of things she thought she remembered - the lullabies and hymns of her family, old songs she heard sung in the saloons and streets of Jael, songs about death and loss and love. Songs that came because they felt right, and because they were all she had left to give him.

_though I'm gone don't be afraid_  
 _we'll meet again on the river someday_  
 _the croak of the frogs will lead ya true_  
 _wear a skirt of greenstone so I know it's you_

She looked down at him. The sun cast everything into red. Daryl's eyes were open and he was looking back up at her, and faintly, very faintly, he was smiling.

And she knew she could let him go.

Beth laid her head against his and slept.

~

"Is he alive?"

She stirred. She didn't want to. First sleep in so long, _real_ sleep, and she wanted to stay inside it because the man she was cradling was dead and she didn't want to say goodbye to him. She hated goodbyes. She wanted to hide in this, hide with him, perhaps eventually go wherever he had gone, into some other world, because

_there are other worlds than these_

But someone was pulling at her - strong hands. She struggled, tried to push them away, tried to reach for the gun at her hip, but her arms were caught in a firm yet gentle grip as she was shifted backward with equal care. Whoever they were, they were trying not to hurt her.

"Not sure." Movement; she opened her eyes, blinking in the light, and saw figures standing over her - two? A third holding her, telling her she was all right, she was going to be all right now. "Gods... Aye, he is. Barely. Might well be dead before we get him back."

"Well, we can but try." The figures were bending down, reaching for Daryl - lifting him, and she was sure they meant to carry him away. She twisted once more against the man who held her, twisted and hissed with dull anger - they weren't going to take him, _they weren't going to take him away from her, not after all this_ \- but the arms around her were far stronger than she could fight, and finally she sagged back against them, breathing hard, and closed her eyes again.

"Alright," said a low, soft voice, close to her ear, and tugged at her. "Can you stand?"

She moved her legs, pushed her feet against the concrete. She wasn't sure. Maybe. She shook her head.

"C'mon." Those strong arms under hers raised her and held her up. "By the gods, you're not doin' a whole lot better than he is."

"She's standin' up. Better than him." Puffing with effort. "Let's get him into the cart, get goin' if we don't wanna lose him."

The sounds of the people moving away. Beth still didn't want to open her eyes. It was better not to. It was better to stay here in her own darkness, warm and deep red, leaning back against the man still keeping her on her feet, until he saw fit to let her go again.

Voice from far off. The voice - a woman - who had first asked if Daryl was alive. "You got her, Rick?"

"Aye. Well enough. Get the rest of what they had, no sense leavin' it behind when we got the room." Arm strong around her, under hers, turning her and moving her carefully forward, encouraging her to lean on him. "Here we go. Not that far, you can do it."

She didn't want to. But half carried by him, giving in, she found she could. Then she was being helped onto something wide and flat, what felt like rough cloth sacks by her head - and Daryl beside her.

Breathing. Too shallow, too slow, but there. She rolled toward him and pressed herself against his side, curled an arm around him and relaxed.

The cart rattled forward. She heard the _clop-clop_ of hooves. Slow at first, and then the pace picked up as someone urged whatever beasts there were into a trot and then a little faster. The regular bumping movement of the cart was soothing, and she slipped back toward the dark again.

_Wouldn't kill you to have a little faith._

No. Not quite.

Beth Greene fell asleep smiling.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a rest. Because I can't be an asshole forever. Though naturally that state of affairs can't last. But in the meantime, reader, we have some new and very familiar friends to meet.

 

 

8

 

Softness under her. Softness and a cool breeze, and sheets and a pillow, and Beth stirred in bed and turned over, drifted between sleep and waking and took pleasure in what she could feel. She was tired still, so tired, and she ached everywhere and was dimly aware that she was very thirsty, but this was a rest day on the farm, a day when she could sleep a little later than usual, and it might be half an hour or even more before her mother came to rouse her.

"Beth."

She moved again, shifted away from that voice and the gentle hand on her shoulder. No, she still had more time to sleep, sleep the ache away. She was sure of it. She _needed_ it.

"Beth, c'mon. C'mon, sweetheart, you should drink something."

Not her mother. No. A strange voice - a woman's voice, soft and low and faintly musical. A hand stroking her hair, smoothing it away from her brow. She didn't know where she was. She didn't know why she was there. She didn't know this woman. This woman shouldn't know her name.

She thought she should be afraid. But she wasn't.

"Try, Beth." A hand under her back now, trying to help her raise herself, and she opened her eyes - and winced at the light. Daylight, warm morning light, too bright for her to make anything out with any real clarity - but she saw blurry outlines of what might be a window, a door, walls of light wood...

A face near hers. Someone bending over her, something in their hand. Beth blinked, reached up and rubbed clumsily at her eyes, and a little of the world came into focus.

It was indeed a woman, seated on the side of the bed in which Beth was lying, leaning in with a cup in her hand. The woman was older, perhaps even a little older than Beth's mother had been, her hair silver and cropped short. Her face was deeply and strangely beautiful, kind but with a hardness under it which suggested she might be a good deal less kind when she had to be. She herself was strange, and Beth had no reason to trust her.

But she did. She did at once. The woman smiled at her, and Beth felt safe.

"Drink some water," said the woman, and again offered her the cup. "Do that, I bid ya, and I'll leave you be. You should rest a while longer, anyway."

She couldn't sit up - she tried for an instant and immediately nausea swept over her, and she thought better of it. But she could push herself up enough to take the cup, and the water was sweet and cold and good - better than the water from the spring had been.

The spring.

"There was a man I was with," she said, the words rushing out of her, practically tumbling over each other. Her voice was rough, cracking, but she didn't notice. "He was... He was with me when they took me, he was sick. Is he here? Is he alright?"

_Is he alive?_

He couldn't be. He couldn't possibly be.

_But they said he was._

The woman took back the cup and turned to put it beside a pitcher on a table, and when she looked at Beth again, Beth saw her smile had faded. "He's here," she said. "Soon, mayhap we'll be able to tell you more." Her smile returned, smaller, but there was still something reassuring in it. Though it was difficult to be reassured. "There'll be water if God wills it."

Something her father used to say. Beth fell back on the pillow, her head swimming. Daryl was here. The woman hadn't spoken of him in the past tense, hadn't spoken of him as if he was dead.

"Where am I?" she whispered. All at once it was very hard to do more than that. "Who are you?"

The woman stroked her again, her fingers soft and cool. Beth closed her eyes and let the touch soothe her. Part of her - not an insignificant part - wanted to tear her way out of bed, find her way out of this room, out of this place, fight past whoever stood between her and Daryl, who she had led out of the dark and had been prepared to carry into his death, from which he had apparently escaped.

Fight past whoever stood between her and the guns.

But she couldn't.

_Not yet._

"You're safe," said the woman. Her hand kept moving over Beth’s hair, her fingers working through the strands, and Beth realized her hair was clean. No longer tangled, no longer matted. _She_ was clean. Clean and in a bed as soft as any she had ever known. And sleep was pulling at her, with far more strength than she could fight.

"You're safe," the woman repeated. "My name is Carol."

This time when Beth slipped away it wasn't into darkness but into light.

~

When she next opened her eyes it was easier, she was stronger, and when she sat up her head spun only slightly.

She had no idea how much time she had lost. The light in the room suggested mid-afternoon, but of the same day? Of the day after? How much time had she lost? Since the farm burned time had been such a slippery thing, so hard to grab onto and so hard to mark in any way that made sense. And this... This made _no_ sense.

She was alone in a small room, smaller than her bedroom at the farm had been, made all of pale wood she thought might be pine. There was a window opposite where she lay, half covered with rough brown curtains which looked old but well-mended. Beside her there was a basin and a table of the same wood as the rest of the place, though stained a little darker, and its edges were carved in a way that suggested no great skill but a genuine desire to make a simple thing a little more beautiful.

There had been furniture like that at the farm. For a moment her heart turned over and tightened.

The bed itself was also small and covered with linens of the kind of colorless not-quite-white that comes when a thing once white is old and has been through many washings. Which was the entire room, really - well-kept, simple, old, and it made her almost more homesick than she could bear.

She pushed it aside. There was no room for it. Not now.

Someone had stripped off her clothes and dressed her in a brown night-shift that just reached her knees. Moving carefully, gingerly, she pushed back the sheets and shifted her legs to sit on the edge of the bed, and waited for the dizziness to get worse.

It didn't. It faded.

Beth got to her feet.

She looked around briefly - there was no sign of her clothes, nor of their gunna, nor of the guns or Daryl's knife. Everything seemed to have been taken from her, and regardless of what the woman - _Carol,_ that name, what was it about that _name_ \- had said about safety, it wasn't at all a thing that inspired confidence.

There was the door. She was facing it. She could walk forward, walk out, see what she could see and demand what she could demand.

Instead she went to the window and pushed the curtains aside.

She was looking down - from the second floor of a building, she guessed - on something very much like Jael, or at least Jael as maybe it once was. Not in the midst of a long, slow process of drying up and tumbling down, though this place was clearly old. It was small, no more than eleven or twelve buildings that she could see, and it was nestled into what looked like a little valley, rocky slopes and thick pines rising on either side. There was a wide central street of packed dirt, and parallel to it, sparkling in the sunshine, ran a shallow creek. In the distance, where the street transformed into a rougher road and was lost to view around a bend, the creek turned the wheel of a mill.

There were people. Only a few moving through the street - a woman carrying a basket of washing, a couple of boys with crates on their shoulders. An older man pushing a barrow of cut wood. They looked _healthy_ somehow; not stooped or stunted like many of the people in Jael but grown and well-nourished. She heard the soft neigh of a horse, though she couldn't see it.

Beth stared. It was like something out of a story. After the poison and the mutants and the nightmare darkness, after the ruin over the mountain and the cold slab of concrete on which she had been sure she and Daryl might both die, it was beyond belief.

It was as if the world here had not yet moved on.

"Oh."

Beth whirled. In the time it took to draw half a breath she was looking for a weapon, for any weapon, anything she could use. But there was nothing - unless she tore down the curtain rod - and it was Carol standing in the doorway, a bundle of cloth in her arms.

"I didn't think you'd be up and about already. Glad to see." She crossed the room and laid the bundle down on the bed. Beth looked silently from Carol to the bundle, and after a few seconds she guessed what it was; Carol was wearing a similar kind of rough jeans and simple shirt to Beth had worn for work on the farm, and she could see the same wrapped up in what Carol had brought.

Clothes. That was something.

Slowly, still cautious, Beth went to the bed and unfolded the things. Carol stood by and watched her, and seemed to be waiting for something.

Beth turned. "What about my boots?"

"We were having them patched and cleaned. Caleb was a little behind with things but they should be ready by now. I'll fetch them."

Beth didn't move. She wanted to believe in this, in this place that seemed better and more wholesome than anywhere she had ever seen but for the farm, that claimed to be safe and _looked_ safe and had given her shelter and water and – apparently – healing. Once she might have believed in it. She might have trusted.

But the world had moved on since then.

"Where's the rest of what we had?"

"We put it in a storeroom for safekeeping. We'll give it back to you." Carol crossed her arms and her smile turned a little wry. "We're not thieves, Beth."

"How do you know my _name?_ " It shouldn't have been the sticking point, shouldn't have been what tipped her over the edge into frustrated anger, but it was. This, above everything else, which they shouldn't know and she didn't know _how_ they knew, and somehow it was the one thing that made itself the center of all her suspicion. "How? I don't know you. I don't know what this place is! You didn't tell me when I asked."

"Beth," Carol said quietly, and while her expression and her tone remained kind, some of the hardness Beth had sensed slipped into both. Not anger – nothing of the kind. But this was a woman who could be firm, and who would bring things back into line when they threatened to slip loose.

How did she know that? These were things _she_ shouldn't know. At least not this much, not so soon, not with such total certainty.

She swallowed.

"You were still weak when you asked me. Too weak to take too many words. I told you what you needed to know." She nodded at the window. "This is the town of Golan. A few of our people found you when they were out on a run. We know your name is Beth because you told us. The same way we know your friend's name is Daryl."

_Is. Your friend's name is._

"I don't remember that." But she was less certain now, wavering, and she couldn't keep either out of her voice.

"I'd be very surprised if you did. You were half sleeping and half waking for almost two full days. You talked a lot - even answered some questions - but I doubt you knew near all of what you were saying."

Beth was about to argue, about to protest - she would remember, she would know if someone asked her anything, if she had been far gone enough to lose all that time surely answering questions would be beyond her... But then she remembered Daryl. Daryl, and the confused flood of things he told her as the fever burned away his mind.

It might be so.

"Daryl," she said, a little fiercely, seizing on the one thing that seemed most immediate, the one thing that couldn't be explained away or put off - or she wouldn’t let it be. "You're talkin' like he's alive. Is he? Is he alright? Tell me, I _beg_ ya."

Carol didn't answer her - not right away - and though her face was difficult to read, everything in Beth went cold and for a few seconds it was difficult to breathe. She had been ready to let him go. Ready to care for him, help him, and when she could do no more for him she had been ready to hold him and ease his journey to the clearing at the end of his path.

But no. No, she was not ready after all.

"I'll get your boots," Carol said at last. "And I'll take you to him."

~

The building, Beth gathered when Carol ushered her out of the room and into a narrow hallway, was some kind of house for the injured and sick, what she had seen referred to in one of her father's books as a _hospital._ There had been nothing like it in Jael, and she had never heard of anything like it anywhere else, but as they moved down the hallway - as bright and pleasant as her room had been - they passed a few open doors in which she could see simple rooms and beds like hers. Empty. The house itself was quiet but not silent, for she heard a low murmur of voices from somewhere downstairs.

Carol led her to a small angled stair and down it to another hallway, a little larger than the one above. The sickrooms here also looked larger - at least the two she could see. The other doors they passed were closed, though she could hear nothing behind them. To her right, rather abruptly, the hall opened into a space that functioned as a wide, bright entranceway that terminated in double-doors, one of which stood open and admitted the breeze. The day was warm, and suddenly, selfishly she wanted nothing more than to go out into it and sit and breathe, and feel that she was alive and - if not strong - at least getting stronger.

Then Carol opened a door and nodded her in, and the desire vanished.

It was a room nearly identical to the others - a bed, a table that doubled as a washstand with folded cloth beside the basin, a chair, a curtained window. There might have been a few other things, maybe, but Beth didn't notice. All her attention narrowed to a single point and remained there, and she saw nothing at all besides Daryl.

He was lying very still, and he was very pale. His face was drawn, almost gaunt. If she didn't know otherwise - if she wasn't _sure_ \- she might have assumed he was dead.

She didn't glance back at Carol. She went to him, looked down at him, and tried to breathe. She hadn't been ready for this. Not in the slightest. She had believed she was. She had seen him hurt, sick, dying, had been with him through all of it, but somehow this was different. Like her, someone had bathed him, and what should have made him look healthier and more human simply made him resemble a corpse washed and laid out for burial.

But he was breathing. She waited until she saw it, his chest rise and fall. She bent down and took his hand.

Cool. But not cold or burning. He wasn't shivering, wasn't sweating. The fever was gone.

Finally she looked over her shoulder. Carol was still standing in the doorway - and the look on her face was not at all what Beth had expected to see.

Worry. Sorrow. Affection. _Recognition._

 _Carol._ Abruptly she remembered. In his delirium Daryl had thought Beth was a woman named Carol. It wasn't an uncommon name; it might be someone else. But she knew it was not.

This was the woman.

She considered saying something, considered what might follow once she did. Instead she pulled herself up, worked steel into her shoulders and spine. "Is he still sick?"

"Yar. And no." Carol crossed the room to the washstand and poured a little water into the basin, soaked the edge of one of the cloths and gently pushed Beth aside. She bent and touched the damp cloth to Daryl's lips, moistening them. "We did everything we could for him. Gave him medicine for the fever. Strong medicine. It broke yesterday morning. But he hasn't come awake since then."

Beth watched, watched the way Carol touched him - marked it. Marked it very well. There was history there; if she hadn't been certain before she was now. "Will he? Wake?"

Carol sat on the edge of the bed and looked up at her. The worry hadn't left her, but there was also a kind of peace now. Not quite acceptance, but Beth thought she knew it. She know how it felt.

She had also felt it, holding him in the dark.

"He may. We've done what we can for his body. Where the rest of him has gone..." She shook her head. "We can't reach him. If he wants to return, if he has the strength, he will. All we can do now is wait. Do you pray?"

The question surprised her, and she realized with a twinge of pain that it hadn't occurred to her. Not by the lake, not in the dark, and not in the days of sickness that followed. She had tried to keep faith, but as it turned out not faith in any god, and she hadn't thought to pray.

Perhaps it died in the fire.

She suspected her father might be sad.

"Once," she said quietly.

"Then pray for him, if it give you peace."

"Do you?" _You, who clearly know him?_

Carol shrugged. "Once. I might still. But I don't expect any god to lead him back. If he comes he'll find his own way." She paused, and her gaze turned thoughtful, studying. Beth didn't entirely like the scrutiny, but she let herself be studied. "How do you know him?"

"How do you?" The question came suddenly, harder and quicker than she meant, but when it was out she thought she could hold to it. She stood her ground and crossed her arms, looking down at Carol, and she felt no fear. Not that Carol had given her cause to fear, but the darkness had changed her. She could feel it.

And not just the dark. Before. The ashes of her life drifting over her fingers.

Carol simply looked back at her, meeting her gaze levelly. She didn't appear startled by the question.

"You didn't have to ask me his name," Beth said. "You knew it already."

Carol sighed and turned her face away. There was new pain in her, new sadness that seemed to come from an even deeper place. An older place. Not evasion, and Beth didn't think evasion was coming. This woman didn't evade. There were things she said and things she didn't say, but there was no duplicity. She wasn't a liar by nature.

She _knew_ these things. So much more than she should. _Like him._ And with him like this, between them, she felt no adversity. What she felt was far more akin to the sensation of joined hands. Something drawing them closer to each other.

_Daryl has his code. The world needs men like that._

In her mind, as her eyes fluttered briefly closed, a crack opened a little wider.

"He should be the one to tell you," Carol said at last. "If he does wake. If you're with him, if he means something to you, whatever it is... It should be his story to keep or give."

"He hasn't given me much."

"No." Carol smiled, faint and thin. "That's his way."

Beth hesitated another moment, and then - seeing no reason not to do so - she sat on the bed beside Carol, reached for Daryl's hand again and held it. He was pale, yes - but he also looked untroubled. Peaceful. He might not be, wherever he had gone, but it was good to see him that way.

"Can you tell me anything at all?"

Carol sighed again and glanced down at her own hands, now clasped in her lap – worn and rough, as if from years of hard work. Beth could feel her mulling it over - feeling its difficulty, the trouble in approaching it. She sensed it was costing the woman something even to go there in her mind. Finally she let out a breath and looked at the window, though the curtains were mostly drawn and little could be seen.

"I was in a bad way," she murmured. "In a place of danger. He was there, he saw it... He tried to help me. Even when I wouldn't be helped." Again that pained smile, though she didn't turn. "We spin traps for ourselves in our own minds, with our own hands, and when people come to cut us loose we guard those traps jealously. Part of us fears the freedom. He knew that. Knows it. Better than most."

Beth was quiet. Listening. Turning the words over and over, running internal hands over their shapes and edges. She knew it. She already knew, it was already in her. Talking this way, about this very thing. The vertigo she had felt with Daryl wasn't quite there, but it was still as though invisible hands were closing around her, shaking her gently. Trying to catch her attention.

Slipping away.

"I lived on a farm," she said softly, her gaze locked on his face. She wanted to touch it, to trace her fingers over his cheek and jaw, but something held her back. "He came to do some work for us. For a bed. Then the farm burned. Everyone died. He took me away."

Carol nodded. Once again she seemed unsurprised. "He wouldn't have simply left you."

"I was surprised, tell ya true. He seemed like a hard man."

"He is. But that's not all he is." This time Carol's smile was a little warmer. "I suspect you know that."

Beth didn't reply. She wasn't sure she could. She remembered what had happened in the dark and after, the basic outlines of it, but there were other things inside it - smaller and larger both together - that were only now returning to her, crashing in on her in waves. So she remembered, all at once, how it felt to hold him the way she had. To feel how he fit against her, how she fit him. How she had _known_ him, his pain. His fear. The way she sang to him and what she sang - it returned to her in lonely echoes, and she understood how the nightmare into which they had fallen had made everything so simple. How it stripped away everything that no longer matted.

How he had reached for her and she had found him.

She pulled in a sharp breath and released his hand, pushed to her feet. She was tired again - and hungry - and wanted to eat and then sleep. But not yet. She turned to Carol, her shoulders straight and her head up. Even if she didn’t feel bold, she could make herself so.

What Daryl had said to her in those final moments of true consciousness. What he had believed might be his last words to her. She had not fully understood them. But she understood everything she needed to. Everything he was telling her she was.

_You remembered the face of your father._

"I'd have my things," she said. "And my-" _My._ "My guns."

Carol looked suddenly bemused, as if she had also noted the word. But she only rose and inclined her head toward the door. "I'll get them, bring them to your room."

"Wait." And this was difficult to ask for. It shouldn’t be; once it might have made her blush, made her concerned for propriety, but those days were gone, and though they had been gone less than two weeks it felt like a much longer time. "I'd like..." Her jaw tightened. "I'd stay here with him." A small concession to good manners. "Do it please ya."

Carol arched a brow. "Where will you sleep?"

Beth said nothing. Carol's brow crept a bit higher. But surprisingly - and then again, perhaps not so much - she didn't argue. "As you will. I'll bring you food." She turned to go, but paused at the door and looked back. "If he needs something to come back for," she said quietly, "mayhap you'll be that thing."

She left the two of them - as they had been for what felt to Beth like years - alone.

~

The bed was small; Beth knew that, but after she ate - bread and a cup of vegetable broth that was both fragrant and surprisingly filling - and pulled off her boots and lay down beside Daryl, that smallness became impossible to ignore, and Daryl was of course incapable of shifting to make room for her. She almost minded - and then she laid a hand on his chest, felt it rise and fall with his breathing and felt the steady beat of his heart, and she minded not at all.

The gunna sack sat on the nearby chair, along with the gunbelts and guns. After she ate she had gone through it and taken inventory, and while Daryl would be far better able to spot missing things than she would, as far as she could tell everything was there. It was that - and the presence of the guns, which she had checked to be certain they were loaded - which finally eased her mind. If these people - whoever they were - meant either of them harm, she would know it by now. They could have killed her a hundred times over. They could have done far worse to her, to him. Maybe she had never seen any such thing directly, before her entire life burned to the ground, but she had heard stories in Jael. Brigands and robbers and madmen living in the wastes. The world had moved on. It was an ugly place.

But this place wasn't ugly, and it didn't feel like a trap. It felt good.

Carol felt good.

From the sack she had taken her journal, and while now she was far too tired to write in it, she held it close to her chest as she turned toward Daryl and pressed herself against his side. She had nearly forgotten it in their long trek through the dark, but now the fact of its presence seemed to mean a great deal. The last relic of her life before. _Comforting_ wasn't the word for it, but it felt like a kind of anchor and also a kind of guiding point, something to which she could orient herself.

The world might move on. Ka's wheel might turn. But who she was had not been completely burned out of her. What had been hers would never be completely gone. She carried it with her, in her secret heart, with all the names and all the faces of everyone she had ever loved.

A new face there, now. A new name.

She slept.

~

What followed was another vigil, though a far kinder one. Beth rested, ate and drank, rested again and felt more of her strength returning. The following day she went out through the house's front doors and found herself on a porch very much like the one with which she had grown up, and she sat on its steps, her eyes closed in the sun, and listened to the sounds of the town as they moved by her. She felt people looking at her - not with anything more pointed than curiosity - but none of them spoke to her, and that was fine. She wasn't ready for that. Not yet. The strength of her body wasn't all she was recovering. Something else was happening inside her, something that had begun with the fire and had continued every second she was with Daryl. A rapid change, but also a slow one. She was being rearranged - and she was also _expanding._ Growing into herself, and the self was a new one.

A good one, she thought. Stronger. Not a girl anymore, not really, but a woman who had led a man through a horror beyond any she had ever before imagined, a woman who had cared for him alone, who had carried him when he could no longer carry himself. Who had faced death over and over until she no longer feared it. She knew there were things far worse than death. Things far more worthy of her fear.

She was a woman who had taken up a gun. She was a woman who had taken death into her hands.

She had _liked_ it.

So perhaps what she was becoming wasn’t entirely good. At least not _good_ as she had been brought up to understand it.

She sat in the sun and wrapped her arms around her knees, and she counted the days in her mind, tried to number each one as it passed, even the ones lost to darkness, trying to reclaim the time. After a little while she started very slightly as knowledge shot through her. Somewhere down in that dark - the very day, she was almost certain, on which she had fired Daryl's gun for the first time - she had turned eighteen.

 _A test,_ she thought. _A coming-of-age._ And she smiled to herself.

~

Once more she sang to Daryl - something that now almost felt like habit - and now that all the desperation had gone out of it, it was a pleasant thing. Carol had seemed unsure of whether Daryl might come back, but as the hours went by, Beth realized she wasn't. He would. It wasn't faith for which she had to struggle. The way might be long for him, and it might be difficult, but he was coming back, and sooner or later he would reach her.

So she sat with him and lay with him, helped Carol in caring for him, in giving him water and the same broth she had eaten - which he did seem able to take without much trouble, that much of him still present - and another day passed. She spoke to him about nothing in particular, told him stories from her childhood, from her life before he came into it - some true and some of them cradle stories told to her by her parents. Some of them simple and plain, and others stories of ancient kings and queens and lords and ladies, battles and quests and fearsome beasts. Stories he might have recognized as half true, she thought, given what he had told her of Arthur Eld and his gunslingers. Stories which, if they went into dark places full of danger and terror, always emerged again into the light. False stories, she knew, even though something similar had happened to her. Comforting, but in this world they were lies.

She had faith, yes. She also wasn't blind.

She sang to him, no more of death and loss but of finding the lost, claiming happiness when no happiness seemed possible, giving love to the loveless. More lies, she thought - but maybe not all lies. And maybe, even if they were, they were lies he needed to hear.

His face grew less pale. He began to stir. On the morning of the third day, just as she was waking beside him, he opened his eyes and she knew he saw her very well.

He murmured something. She couldn't quite hear. She leaned closer, his lips almost against her ear, and he said it again.

"Why dontcha go ahead an' play some more? Keep singin'."

She drew in a breath, a confused smile pulling at her mouth. "I wasn't playin' anything."

"Keep singin'," he repeated, and closed his eyes.

She laid her head down, still confused, still smiling. After a while, she did.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So wow, another one that really wanted to be written and _fast_. But little wonder: there are things to be revealed. Stories to be told. And perhaps when they're done a few more things will be explained.
> 
> I hope so, anyway.

 

 

9

 

"Didn't think to see you again."

Carol turned from the window - half turned, as if she was hesitant to look at him directly - her hand still on the curtain she had just drawn aside. It was morning and the light should have been warm on her, kind, but while it caught her face and made her look younger, it also made her look sad.

Sad, Daryl thought, and a little angry. Because perhaps she was.

It was the morning after he woke that first time, and for the first time since then Beth had left him alone and returned to her own room to rest. He wasn't particularly upset to see her go - she had needed the time with him as much as he had, and now that time was over and a new part of his healing had to begin. Today he was strong enough to sit up unassisted, and he thought in another two or three he might be able to get up and walk.

But for now there was this.

"Neither did I." At last she faced him fully and her smile was thin. Whatever had happened to her in the four years since he last saw her, he could see the strain of it on her face. It had left marks. Marks on top of the ones he already knew were there. "Ka is a wheel. So they say."

"You say true, I say thankya," he said, still quiet. He wasn't sure what he was feeling, and that wasn't a pleasant thing. To be unsure of how one felt was to be unsure of how to act - but he had never been all that good at feelings. This should probably not surprise him.

For a moment neither of them spoke. He was waiting for her, watching her for some indication of how this might go, and he sensed she was doing the same. Then something seemed to break in her - so far down it was difficult to see - and she crossed back to him and sat down on the edge of the bed. She looked down at his hand, her brow creased, as if she was considering taking it but something was holding her back.

So he took hers, and while her fingers tightened briefly in his grip, they quickly relaxed. She sighed and lowered her head and he saw the tension in her shoulders slip away.

"I thought he might kill you," he said, even softer than before.

"I know." She let out a sudden hard laugh - almost a bark - and swept her free hand down her face. "He didn't."

"Yar, can see that."

"He did try." Once more she wasn't looking at him. Her head was turned toward the window, as though she was watching the curtains shifting slightly in the breeze, but he could feel that she wasn't. She wasn't watching anything. She was sitting with him, her hand was in his, but she was very far away. "He tried so many times after that. Not... Not direct, you understand? Not being clear about it. Don't know if he even knew he meant to. But he did. Every time I thought... _This is it, this is the end of it, now I'll leave him._ But I never did. Somehow it still seemed... It still seemed worse to do that than to stay."

"I know." His thumb moved, tracing over the bones and tendons at the back of her hand - and the long, pale scar that he didn't have to look at to remember.

The first things about a person one notices are the things best remembered.

"Yes." The slightly more formal affirmation was only gentle as it left her, and he heard more things in it than he could name - sadness, the pain of recognition, guilt, shame... All things he knew, and as before it was a cord bound between them, wonderful and terrible and unbreakable. "Yes, you do."

"But you left him." Though even as he said it he knew it wasn't so simple, nor so good. There were things she wasn't saying, a great many of them. And there was someone who no longer seemed to be there. Unseen, unspoken of. "You got away."

"Did I?" She turned to him and he wasn't startled to see tears in her eyes, not quite ready to spill. "Do you ever?"

For a moment he didn't answer. Then he shook his head. "Dunno."

She nodded, looked down again, but he didn't see the tears fall. She wouldn't let them fall, he thought. The woman she was now, the woman she had somehow become, wouldn't do that.

"I killed him," she said. Her voice was flat, nearly emotionless, but he could still hear the storm that raged beneath it. "I had to. It was the only way it was ever going to end."

Daryl was silent a long time. Some of it was simply not knowing what to say - wondering if he should say anything at all, if whatever he could say would only fall as flat as her tone. But it was also that it pierced him, stabbed him through, and now the past was surging up through the hole it made, bleeding out of him, choking him, and he wasn't sure how to make it stop.

_Gotta be one of us. You know it._

But she broke the silence for him, wiping at her eyes. "I was coming downstairs with a pitcher. I tripped, I fell, it broke. It was our last piece of good crockery, I think it was his ma's... And next thing I knew he had me by the hair and he was dragging me back on the floor, shouting how he was going to break me too, and I..." She trailed off and tilted her head back, an awful smile stretching her mouth, and let out another one of those hard barks of laughter. "It wasn't the worst he did to me. You know that. But it was... It was the last thing, somehow. The very last thing."

Her hand lay in his. It was shaking, almost imperceptibly.

"The second he let me go I picked up one of the pieces and I cut his throat."

For once the word came to him, and he knew it was the right one, the true one.

"Good."

"We left," she went on, almost as if she hadn't heard him. "We just... wandered around for a while. Didn't stay anywhere for very long. Ended up in some bad places, tell ya true. Stayed in a couple of dead towns, when it was all there was."

All at once there was something in the air between them, something darker. Something terrible. He felt it and shied away from it; he already knew what it was, but if one of them said it, it would become real.

But of course it had started, and neither of them could stop it now.

"What about Sophia?"

Carol looked at him for a long moment. All the pain in the world was in that gaze, and he felt it, it wrenched at him, and he almost had to look away. Then she shook her head, and it was all she needed to say. He took a breath and everything inside him clenched, twisted, and the pain was sharp but how to let it out, if he should... He had no idea.

He lowered his head and his eyes burned.

For another stretch of time they were silent. Sounds of the town below drifted up to them: laughter, the squeak of wheels, someone shouting to someone else about getting off their lazy ass and seeing to the hoeing before the sun got too high. But the sounds didn't reach them. A wall sat between them and the rest of the world, and they were both content to let it remain there.

"I found this place," she said at last. "Too late. But I'm here now. Maybe I was meant to be. You're here too."

"This place." He had nearly forgotten but it hit him again, and it might be too soon to ask her given what had just been said, but he needed to know. It might be important, whatever the reason. He had seen enough in two decades to be sure of that much. "How is it... what it is? Ain't seen nothin' like it for goin' on ten years now."

"World's moved on?" Her smile was a little less pained and she squeezed his hand, appearing to consider the question. "This place is special. It has... There's something near here, allows it to be what it is." She cocked her head, looking thoughtfully at him. "Actually it's why you're not dead now."

"But what _is_ it?"

"It's... It's hard to explain. You have to see it." She released him - a little abruptly - and rose. "When you're stronger, Rick can take you out. Show you."

"Rick?" That name, he thought, as something jolted through him. Almost too quick to catch, there and gone again as if it had never been, but it _had_ been there. She was already at the door, but she paused and turned.

"He was one of the people found you. I expect he'd like to see you anyway." A strange look came over her face, an expression he couldn't hope to pin down and put words to. "You and him have some things in common."

But before he could ask her anything else she was gone.

~

"You promised you'd tell me some things."

He looked up - this wasn't unexpected, but his movement was still a bit sharp. He remembered having promised when he swore to use the gun - much of the time in the dark and almost all the time afterward was hazy and indistinct, like what it was: a dream lost in fever. But there were things he did recall, and this was one of them.

Beth was sitting beside him on the bed and unwrapping the dressing over his shoulder. She hadn't paused and she wasn't looking at him, but he could tell by her tone that this time there wouldn't be any putting her off. There would be no evading her. She had hunted him down and now he was well-cornered.

He sighed. It was always coming. Eventually.

"C'mon," she said, and she gave him a hint of a smile as her eyes flicked up to his face. "You swore by _the face of your father._ Doesn't that mean somethin'?" She looked suddenly thoughtful. "What _does_ it mean?"

"Wasn't in your da's books?"

"I don't remember seein' it." She shrugged. "Like I said, there was a lot there, but a lot I think wasn't."

"It's an old way of promisin'. Most serious promise you can make."

"Like _hile?_ That way of talkin'?"

"Mhmm." She finished unwrapping the wound and he prepared himself for it to be unpleasant – it was the first time he had gotten a good look at it since waking - but it wasn't, not nearly as much as he had feared. It still looked ugly, the flesh still raw in places, but for the most part it was scabbed over, and the edges were already pink with new skin.

Beth leaned closer. "Healin' pretty good. Carol said so, too."

He let out a sound somewhere between a laugh and _hmph._ "Itches."

"That means it's gettin' better." She looked up at him again. "That's somethin' else you gotta tell me. Carol. You know her."

He laughed again - more of a genuine laugh, and he realized he wasn't annoyed by it, at least not much. No, he hadn't wanted to tell her, but he had sworn to do it if he lived – Carol fell under that, as far as he was concerned – and here he was, alive to do the telling. A fair trade, probably.

And it was her. It was Beth. Maybe there was a great deal he didn't remember, but he remembered her holding him, singing to him, how her voice had been like a light. Something he could follow, something to keep the darkness from eating him alive. How he had curled into her arms like a child and felt safe. Here she was now, sitting with him, the afternoon sun playing over her hair and turning it to rich, deep gold. Almost like honey. He wanted to touch it, run his fingers through it - and he only hesitated for a moment.

Everything was different now.

He combed his fingers into its strands, caught its fall in his palm, and her breath seemed to catch.

"I'll tell you," he said softly. "Tell you everythin', tell ya true."

She nodded slowly and didn't try to pull away from him. Instead she lifted her free hand and touched his wrist, and remained like that for a long moment.

"Where you want me to start?"

"Start with the guns," she said immediately. Her voice was low, as soft as his had been, but it was hard. She had grown up, he thought again. When he met her she had already been moving away from her childhood, hadn't really been a girl anymore even if the traces of it could be seen in her, but she had left that all behind, and completely.

She should know. She should know, if he was going to do what he planned to.

"Alright," he said. "The guns."

As she rubbed salve on the wound and finished changing the dressing, as his voice subtly changed and his words felt and sounded older - as if they came from somewhere beyond and before him - this was the story he told her.

~

_My da' was a gunslinger. In Gilead, before it fell to John Farson. The Good Man, they called him. Ya ken the Good Man?_

_He wasn't good. He fought under the banner of_ freedom, _said he was for_ equality, _said the Affiliation of baronies and the gunslingers who guarded it was tyranny and needed to be overthrown. He was a liar. He was a bandit, a harrier and a thief, and when he destroyed Gilead all fell to ruin. My da' spoke of a world of light, order... civilization. That world moved on, likely would've done so even without Farson and his army and his treachery, but he gave it help. And his loyalties..._

_They were to darker things._

_No, I'll not tell you now. Now isn't the time. I will, only..._

_Soon._

_Farson was held at bay for a time by a gunslinger named Roland Deschain, by his ka-tet - the men who fought with him. Called him dinh. Leader, man to whom they bent knee. But in the end Gilead fell anyway, and that world moved on forever._

_My da' wasn't one of Roland's ka-tet. This part was never made plain to me. But before Gilead fell he left, and his leaving... He never said. But I know he fell before Gilead did. He was angry, y'see. Angry at them, angry at himself. That was plain enough, his anger, and after my ma burned to death in her sleep he made my brother and me feel that anger in its full._

_You saw my back._

_Then you saw enough._

_He couldn't have fixed whatever he did. I didn't need to know what it was to know that. But he thought he could._ Needed _to think it. Got it in his head the world movin' on the way it has, all the fall of that_ world of light - _could be moved back if he passed along what he knew to us. Made us what he couldn't be. He wanted to send us... to a place where everythin' could be made right again._

_No, I'll not tell you that now, either._

_That's a much longer story._

_He'd never been a kind man but he got much worse. Got cruel. Seemed like he liked hurtin' us, did it for fun, but now... I dunno. I think maybe it wasn't that simple. I think maybe it was..._

_I'll never know. Can't ask him now._

_But he said only one of us could take the guns. Only one of us would be_ worthy. _Dunno where he got that idea from... Two guns, weren't there? But it never made much sense. He had his rules and never mind where he got 'em from. He sure as shit wasn't about to explain 'em._

_The hurtin’ got worse and worse. My brother and me..._ We _were ka-tet, I think, much as we could be. We were because all we had was each other. I think he knew that. Was afraid of it somehow, what it meant. He tried to turn us on each other. Tried for years. I wouldn't be turned, but Merle..._

_I was never sure about Merle. Tell ya true._

_Never said that before._

_Didn't matter, not when it came to it. Merle ran, in the night. He was eighteen. He ran, and I didn't see him again until_ I _was eighteen. Until I had to pass a test. Take the guns or be sent away._ Sent west, _it was called._

_Ya ken? You see how it was?_

_I had to best him. My da'. I didn't want to. Would've run. Should've run. Merle was right, but Merle was..._

_I dunno how to say what he was._

_But in the end I went to my test. And what happened, happened._

_~_

The Demon Moon.

It was red through the naked trees, still rising, and when it cast its light over the dirt yard in front of the shack Daryl thought of blood, which he would spill. Have to. So he had been told. Didn't want to. It rose up in him like a storm and beat against the inside of his skin, threatened to spill over in tears, but he wouldn't allow it. Not now. The whole thing had the quality of a nightmare, the same inevitability, and as he stood, fists clenched, waiting, it occurred to him that this was the culmination of his heart being beaten down until it was a pulp, until there was nothing in him left to protect, until he was hollow and stringed and ready to be moved like a puppet.

And he thought _This is not what it is to be a gunslinger. I have been lied to my entire life._

_My life will not end in that lie._

His father was a dark shape in the crimson light, standing in the shadow of the half-collapsed entryway. He was armed with a stick, thick and long – more of a club than anything else – and as he stepped forward he held it with both hands. His face was cold. Expressionless. But in his eyes Daryl saw every bit of hate, of rage - every bit of sorrow that had been beaten into his sons for nearly a decade. It burned in him - not hot but like the burn of a freezing day in the depths of Year's End, the burning that takes the hands and settles into the fingers, turns them an angry red. Daryl saw it and recognized it, and not just because of its familiarity.

He recognized it because he felt it. He felt it, and he feared that no matter how this ended, his father had won.

His father approached him slowly, each step deliberate, and he stopped no more than ten feet away. He transferred the stick to his right hand and thumped the end of it into the dirt. The sound was unnaturally loud. Somewhere, a night bird shrieked.

"Have you come here for a serious purpose, boy?"

_Yes. Yes, you faithless bastard, I have._ "I have come for a serious purpose."

"Have you come an outcast from your father's house?"

Daryl had to fight back his laughter. "I have so come, and will remain so unless I best you."

"Have you come with your chosen weapon?"

"I have."

"What is your weapon?"

Daryl didn't answer. He stood his ground, silent, and again the bird shrieked - an anguished sound, as if it had suffered some great loss and couldn't hold back the pain of it. Moments before he had been almost sure his father had already won... But no. No, not if he had the strength to do this. Years of pain, years of hatred, years of every last fragment of love broken and the shards pulled out of him. All for this moment.

All for the _Tower._

But not if he could stand and be true.

"What is your weapon?" Now his father sounded impatient - his voice had taken on the elevated tone it did whenever he was referring back to the old lore, the old rituals, but now he was beginning to sound like himself again, like the ugly, twisted thing he had allowed himself to become, and Daryl felt a measure of satisfaction at that. That he had already pulled off a little of the mask. Struck a blow at the obscenity this thing truly was.

"What is your _weapon?"_ His father started forward, the stick slightly raised, and Daryl thought _This is it, this is where it begins and where it ends, and am I ready? Years ago I was wrong about the ending, so can I face the truth of it?_

Yes. All that pain, years more of loneliness so immense and crushing that it had already squeezed all the life out of him and left him what he was: the mutated deer. Standing in ruins with his limbs hanging useless.

But standing. Still.

He could face it.

"I have no weapon."

His father stared at him. That look of genuine surprise gave Daryl the only real burst of pleasure he could remember feeling since his childhood.

" _What?"_

"I have no weapon," he repeated, patiently. "I come with my chosen weapon. My chosen weapon is none." He raised his hands, showing they were empty, and took a long breath. "I won't best you."

_Except I will._

His father let out a disbelieving cough of a laugh, and when he spoke he did so rapidly and unsteadily. "Then you'll be sent west, boy. Sent west in disgrace. Like your shit of a brother. He had the _sense_ to leave. You stand here now like..." He trailed off, and all the affected pride had gone out of him. He was almost incoherent, babbling threats he knew were useless, and again Daryl felt a wave of cold pleasure.

"I won't go west. Won't go nowhere." He waved a hand at the shack, at the trees, the dirt, the Demon Moon, his father. "You're callin' Merle shit? All'a _this_ is shit. All of it. Always has been and you been shovelin' it into us for years. I ain't eatin' no more." He dropped his hands. "This is over."

He could practically _see_ his father's rage. It swelled in him, rose like a thunderhead, glowed like the moon itself - and in a single, terrifying moment Daryl saw something else. A curtain fell - or was torn down - and he saw what was behind his father's eyes, what had made its way into his brain like a parasite and made it an infected thing, rotting. Made him into a walking corpse.

_Red, it's the Red,_ he thought hysterically, not understanding the words, and almost lost his stance. He almost shrank back with the force of his fear, his horror, almost turned to run, almost fell. Not from his father. From what was _inside_ his father.

_It's the King, oh God, it's the_ King.

"You dare," his father whispered. "You _dare._ "

No. It was gone. No red King. Just a sad, broken man and the sad, broken thing he was about to do. "Aye," Daryl said, and he took up the High Speech like the one weapon he was willing to touch. "I dare, father. Tonight I break your devar-tete. Your prison does not hold me." He pulled his lips back from his teeth in a sneer, all contempt. "Deal your death, chary-ka. It will find you in the end."

His father roared and charged. Daryl stood and let him come.

The first blow struck him on the shoulder, and he heard the crunch of his collarbone long before he felt the pain. The second took him in the side and knocked the breath out of his lungs in a hard, agonizing rush. The third hit him in the upper thighs and sent him to his knees, hugging himself, trying to breathe - but he wasn't screaming. He wouldn't scream. He wouldn't scream and he wouldn't cry, and he wouldn't _lose._

And the blows kept raining down on him.

His back, his shoulders again, the side of his head, and then black and red flowers bloomed in his vision and he fell, and as his father continued beating him, screaming curses, abuse, telling him he was worthless, had always been worthless, had been a blight and a sore and a bag of pus since he was born and he deserved to die in the fucking dirt like a dog, Daryl drifted away into those blooming flowers, floated into the red, up into the Demon Moon, and he was standing in the midst of a vast field of roses as red as the blood now flowing from his nose and mouth and ears. He stood and stared at them, their sheer intensity like an assault on his eyes, the fact of their existence blows upon his mind greater than any his father could ever deal out.

And across that field, rising, immense, monstrous and dark.

The Tower.

_I won't. Never that. It doesn't matter, anyway. In another few minutes - maybe sooner - I'll be dead and all of this will be over._

On a high balcony, suddenly visible though it should not have been, something cloaked all in red laughed and raised a claw of a hand and beckoned. _It is never over, gunslinger. Never over until it is, until you have walked your path and fulfilled your purpose. Never over for you, no matter how many times you try to die._

_Because there are other worlds than these._

The moon. The moon in his eyes, filling all of his vision. His father, a mad, flailing shape, blotting it out.

And then there was a gun in his hand.

Not in his hand. Against his hand, his fingers curled against its grip. But there was no difference between one and the other, no time between when _against_ became _in._ Years of training asserted itself, slammed down over his mind. The hawk soared, and the hawk had no pity. The hawk had no pride.

The hawk was death.

The gun spoke thunder and his father fell.

For a long, silent moment he lay in the dirt, feeling his pain in a kind of distant dullness. The gun was still in his hand but his hand had fallen to his side, limp as a dead man's. He stared up at the moon and was vaguely aware of the slumped shape of his father a few feet away, unmoving. He needed no confirmation. He knew what he had done.

Knew he had lost.

"Brother."

A new shape crouching over him. Its face was lost in darkness, but Daryl didn't have to see it to know who it was. He would have known even if the man hadn't spoken. Would have known it by the way he moved through the air, existed in the world.

The bond of ka-tet is deeper than what can be heard, what can be seen.

"Merle."

"Knew you were gonna need me sooner or later, little brother." Merle lifted his head, looking toward the corpse of their father. His features were thrown into half-light by the moon, and he looked inhuman, something between a man and a demon himself. Wild and dangerous and beautiful, and Daryl loved him so much the pain of it was worse than anything his father had done.

Merle was holding the other gun. He held it out. "This is yours."

Daryl shook his head, and agony lanced through him. "No."

"Has to be."

"No." _God, don't do this to me._

"Gotta be one of us. You know it." Merle laid the gun down by his other hand, but didn't move. "Always was you, little brother. He knew it. Hated you for it. Guess you knew that, too." He tilted his face up to the moon, and Daryl saw his cheeks were wet with tears. In the light they looked like blood. "You take 'em. You do what you gotta do."

"Merle, no. Please..." He tried to push himself up and barely made it onto his elbows when the pain sent him back to the dirt. His voice was a barely audible croak. Breathing was burning torture. "Stay."

"Can't." Merle was still for a long moment. Then he bent, smoothed Daryl's hair back from his forehead, and kissed his brow. "Can't, brother. Never could."

He rose, looming in the dark, haloed by the moon. Daryl let out a sob. Because this was always coming, he was right - this was never something that could be dodged or turned aside, and the stupid pride of a stupid boy never had a chance.

_Ka is a wheel, its one purpose to turn._

"I love you, little brother," Merle said softly, and was gone into the night.

Above it all, a baleful red eye, the Demon Moon looked impassively down.

~

"That was twenty years ago."

Beth didn't immediately speak. She had long since finished rebandaging Daryl's wound and was sitting with her hands in her lap, not quite looking at him. He couldn't read her face, but he didn't think he needed to. He could feel her. Feel her the way he had felt Merle, feel how she fit in the world. How she fit with him.

"You took the guns."

"Aye," he said softly, and now the High Speech was like ashes in his mouth. "I did."

"But you won't use 'em. Or you hate to."

He nodded.

"Every time you do, he wins again."

She had said it. He had said so much in the last hour, more than he could ever remember saying in years, but this... He was tired, all at once and heavily so, and he wasn't sure he could have. So she did. She found the words and they were true, and he was grateful to her.

"Never told that to anyone." He smiled at her, so small it almost wasn't there. "You see I'm keepin' promises."

"So far." She returned his smile, though it was also small, and more than a little sad. She wasn't judging him, of course not, but he also sensed that she wasn't judging _anyone._ She was simply listening to him. Listening and understanding him.

"There's more. Isn't there? You said there was. And there's Carol."

He let out a long breath. He wanted to, he realized. He hadn't, hadn't at all, had in fact been a little afraid of it, but now that he had begun he wanted to go on, wanted to get it out of him. Wanted to have it free and look at it in the light - in _her_ light - and perhaps see it all differently. Even the parts that frightened him most, maybe. Even the parts he couldn't hope to explain.

There were things he had left out. He hadn’t told her about the Red. About the King.

About the Tower.

But God, he was so tired.

"I-" he started, and she shook her head.

"Not now. Later."

Everything in him loosened, and again he felt a rush of gratitude. She might be relentless, might hunt him down, but she also seemed to know when to let him go. She had known by the fire, that first night. She had since then, every time he asked her to leave him be. He owed her. He owed her the truth.

He wanted to give it to her.

"Later," he echoed, and when she nudged at him he slid back on the bed, lay down and made room for her on his good side. This felt natural now, something that never had before. Something he had never really _done._ Something he never would have imagined he would be comfortable with, let alone want.

And he did want it. He wanted her.

How?

That was also for later. He knew what he needed to know.

_I love you,_ he thought as she lay down beside him, as she pressed close and he wrapped his arm around her and laid his cheek against the top of her head. _My girl, I love you._

_I do._


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More things are revealed, and things remain relatively calm. But we shouldn't trust calm, should we, reader? I think we should not.
> 
> We know what calm often precedes.

 

 

 

10

 

"So what about Carol?"

Another night and half a day had passed, and by noon Daryl had decided he felt well enough to get up and walk - well enough to try. Carol had seemed dubious but hadn't been inclined to push back with any particular force, so - leaning on Beth - he made his way downstairs and out to the porch. And by the time he reached the doors he was depending on her less than he had.

So he allowed himself a small smile, now, as he leaned on the railing. Unlike Beth he was still dressed in the plain, loose-fitting trousers and shirt in which they had given him to sleep, and he was drawing quick glances from the few passers-by. He marked them, but didn't care. He might speak to them later or he might not. For the moment he was content to leave the matter be.

"You been sittin' on that 'til you thought I could take it."

She leaned on the rail beside him, her shoulder just touching his. "Pretty much." She gave him a sunny smile. "Face of your father."

"Yar, I did." His fingers twisted at each other for a moment. "Trade every secret for a fuckin' smoke right about now."

"You don't have any more?"

He shook his head. "Last one was by that tree at camp." The corner of his mouth twisted upward. "While you were in the creek."

She laughed - light, untroubled. Whatever awkwardness there had been, they both knew it had passed.

They were too close for it now.

"Maybe you can find some more here."

"Maybe." His eyes narrowed as he scanned the street. He trusted Carol, trusted what she said, but that didn't mean Golan and everything Golan seemed to be rested easy with him. Didn't mean he rested easy in _it._ It might not be a trap, might not be hiding a darkness under its bizarre health and wholesomeness, but there was something about it all the same. Rick - whoever he was - might do some things to clear it up.

Then again, he might not.

"Well, I ain't got any smokes to trade. So you'll just have to tell me." She nudged his arm with her shoulder and then, after a few seconds' hesitation, she leaned her head against him. "Tell me how you know her."

He sighed - not necessarily an unhappy sound. She felt good against him, as she always did now, and he was feeling what he had been feeling with a certainty that increased by the hour: that there was more in this closeness, more waiting for them both. That it was coming, and like everything else it wouldn't be turned aside. It was part of a changing for both of them, like the Peddler's Moon sliding into the golden Huntress, and that meant it was as inevitable as the turning of the seasons.

He wasn't afraid of it. Not that. Though once he might have been.

"Not much to tell. It was like with you," he said softly. "Stayed with her for a few days, restin' up before I moved on. Her and her little girl. And her husband." He hesitated as something dark slipped over him, distant but unquestionably there. He had known it would come, and he knew Beth would feel it. All the better, perhaps. It might mean there would be some things he wouldn't have to say.

"Her husband was a mean sumbitch. Knew it right away, but after a day or two I got he was meaner than he even let on at first. Hittin' on her. Didn't hit on his daughter, but there was..." The darkness gathered, swirled, and he a ghost of old rage drifted across his awareness. _Should've killed him. Should've killed him myself._ "There was somethin' in the way he looked at that girl. Somethin' poison.

"Was already gettin' the feelin' somethin' was on the way. Like how you smell a storm. He hadn't done nothin' real bad to her yet, but second night he knocked her down and I got between him and her, said if he touched her again I'd put a bolt in him and another just to be sure. Told her she could come with me. Her and Sophia. Had no idea what would happen after that, but I wasn't thinkin' then. Just wanted to get her away."

He looked at Beth. He looked at her for a long moment, and she met his gaze and said nothing.

"Ya ken why."

She nodded.

"Carol begged me not to." He paused, his attention now fixed on his hands, turning over and over each other. His bow was back in his room and all at once he ached to hold it, to feel its weight and all its deadly potential. Like a child's comfort-toy. Not that it would do him any good now. Not that it would help Carol.

Not that it could save Sophia from whatever end had taken her.

"Lookin' at her there... I dunno. She meant it. She really did. Sometimes I think I should've done it anyway. Sometimes I'm sure of it. But I know _why_ she did. I know it very well. And I couldn't. I couldn't do that. Maybe I was just a fuckin' coward, but..." He rolled his good shoulder, half a shrug. "I left."

He had nothing else to say, he realized. There was nothing else to the story, not then - and he had nothing to say for himself. Nothing to say in his own defense. He had walked away, and it didn't matter that Carol begged him, and it didn't matter that his heart shattered when he looked at her then, with all the force of his recognition and sorrow and grief. All the force of his guilt.

He walked away.

_Maybe I coulda done somethin'._

He had nothing else to say, so he said nothing else.

Beth asked no more questions. She, too, was quiet. She kept leaning on him, and after a short while he curled his arm around her and held her close.

This was the sweetness, he thought. The sweetness before the pain came again. Before the darkness rose and the Demon Moon bathed everything in blood. He would take it, take what he could from it, and for the moment he would be in no hurry. He had been given this, this gift, this girl whom he loved and who he was certain loved him without any exchange of words needed - a love that still, for a little while longer, required no definition.

But it would come. As soon as he took one more step toward her, this gentle thing would become something else, though the gentleness might remain at its core. He was death and now so was she, and he had given that to her the second he allowed her to take his gun. The second he took her from the farm. There was no stopping it. And he didn't _want_ to stop it.

Because it was already too late.

Because even the sweetest honeypot was still a trap.

_Take that last step with her, gunslinger. Set the fire. Give yourself to its flames._

_Deliver yourself, body and heart and soul, to Ka's crushing wheel._

_~_

Beth walked.

It was, she thought as she made her way down one side of Golan's central dirt street, like coming out of a cocoon. Before, on the steps, she had still been inside it, still shifting into whatever new form she would take. That shifting was not done - would perhaps never be done - but she had emerged and was now sitting in the sun, waiting for her wings to dry. Waiting to be able to spread them.

Wings. That was a thing.

Like hers, Daryl's clothes had been cleaned and mended as best they could be, and he had received them that morning. He had said nothing about the mending - though Beth hadn't missed the small smile he sent Carol's way - but he had clearly been pleased, turning the trousers and shirts over in his hands. Even the blood had been washed out of the one, at least enough that the stain wasn't immediately visible - and the tear patched. It was clear there had been patching, but Beth thought it would hold well enough, and anyway, it wasn't as if they were going to a _Spring Cotil'_ -

And she thought of Shawn and felt a pang.

There had also been his vest, at which she hadn't yet taken a close look, and which was clearly leather of some quality - probably, she thought, the best thing he owned except for his boots, because a pair of boots which would wear for a long time was a precious thing. The vest was also long-worn, but its stitching was holding together well, and on its back - in different leather that might once have been red but was now almost a rusty brown - were sewn a pair of wings.

She had looked at these as she was handing the vest to him, and thought strangely of the circling hawk.

She glanced up - Daryl had caught her gaze and looked bemused.

"Just never seen anythin' like it," she said, sounding almost shy in her own ears.

Daryl shrugged. "Had it made," he said, and offered no more information.

So as noon came on she had felt the need to stretch her legs more than the house would allow, and she had dressed - still in the new things Carol had brought her, leaving her old ones for the time being - and walked down the porch steps and out into the town.

She hadn't taken what she would consider an accurate count of the population, but at a guess she thought it might be anywhere between twenty and thirty people, if children were included in the number. She had only seen a few at any one time, and had wondered idly where the others might be; there were no fields that she could see, though perhaps they kept some outside the valley, and she had spied a couple of vegetable gardens. Someone kept horses; as she walked she saw a stable tucked against one of the steep hillsides - hills that were almost cliffs - and a fenced yard. The houses were small, half the size the farmhouse had been, and very plain. She saw lines of washing, and one of them was in use by an older woman with powerful arms and shoulders, her hair drawn up under a kerchief.

There was little else, but for the mill. She saw no saloon, nothing that looked like a general store, and no natural central structure but for the house in which she had been kept. Near the mill was what appeared to be a smithy adjacent to one of the houses, but that was all.

No store. No saloon. If so, that indicated this was a town that had little contact with anyone outside it. And it was a town that got its goods from somewhere else. In some other way.

As she walked Beth pondered this. She hadn't asked Daryl what he thought. Not yet. But she had been feeling him out. Getting a sense. He didn't seem alarmed, so far.

But like her, he was watching.

"You're one'a the new ones."

Beth turned. A little girl - no more than eight - standing just behind her, a rag doll dressed in a dirty smock hanging from one hand. The girl's head was a tangle of red curls, and she was very dusty, as if she had been playing in it. Perhaps, Beth thought, she had.

She nodded, giving the girl a faint smile. The girl looked up at Beth with an air of disapproving curiosity, as though she wasn't yet sure of her own opinion but so far wasn't impressed.

"Got all the right number of eyes."

Beth arched a brow. This wasn't exactly what she had expected, if she expected anything. "I do."

"Thought you wouldn't. Tabby said you wouldn't. You're boring," she added, making what seemed to be her final pronouncement regarding the whole business. "What about the other one?"

"He does, too."

The girl tossed her head and made a little _hmph_ sound. "Everythin' about you's regular? Ain't got the poison in you. Tabby says they all poison out there. All muties an' such."

Beth was beginning to understand. _Out there_. This place, which felt cut off from everything, which felt so self-contained. The clear water, the rich green of the pines which surrounded it on all sides and the clean scent they sent into the air, the quiet, the lack of any obvious sickness or mutation in anyone or anything she had seen. Even the quality of the light.

She had been to Jael. Had seen it, the dull-eyed people who never appeared quite strong or quite well, the dryness that seemed to permeate everything, the dust, the periodic occurrence of animals too mutated to survive. She had seen it but hadn't thought about it, or thought about the farm in relation to it. Had never juxtaposed the two. Now, forced into considering it, meeting the girl's skeptical gaze, she realized that Golan _reminded_ her of the farm. A great deal.

She wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad thing.

She shrugged, still smiling. "Cry pardon we've disappointed you."

The girl mimicked her shrug, as if to say _Not your fault, woman. Can't help what you are,_ and gave Beth one more look and trotted away, swinging her doll at her side. She headed back toward one of the yards, where another older girl was standing and leaning on a rough wooden fence, waiting for her. Tabby, presumably, and judging by her shockingly red hair she was the girl's sister.

Again, something in Beth's chest clenched. Just for a moment.

She turned and headed toward the creek, swinging down close to the bank. It was grassy, though the grass was thin, and lined with water-smoothed stones. A few of them glittered with flecks of something that looked almost like metal.

She had never seen anything like it.

She was so distracted by it that she nearly fell over a larger stone – more of a boulder – and the woman seated on it.

She caught herself with her hands and looked up just as the woman turned and met her surprised gaze with one both dark and piercing, almost uncomfortably so. The woman was powerfully built, her bare arms slender but well-muscled, her skin a deep, rich brown. Her hair hung around her shoulders in thick ropes, held back from her face by a band of cloth - bright colors, bright pattern. Somehow it stood out more than anything else about her, but for her eyes.

And the long, narrow sword she was sharpening on a whetstone.

Beth didn't feel fear. What she felt was a stab of apprehension - and another odd wave of familiarity. Fainter than the others she had felt with Daryl, with Carol, but there. Once more, for a fraction of a second, she felt vertigo.

_Everything is getting thin. There are doors. There are doors everywhere, and anything might walk through._

"Cry your pardon," she said, and after half a moment the woman nodded.

"You're up and walkin'."

That familiarity again. Not... Not quite like Carol. More immediate. The voice. The voice and the shape of her, in her mind looming over her, nothing more than a hazy silhouette. Speaking. The first words she heard.

_Is he alive?_

"You know me."

"Should. Was one of the ones who found you." The woman laid the sword down in her lap and faced Beth more squarely. "You're lookin' better. As in, not half-dead." She gave Beth half a smile. "Heard your friend pulled through as well."

"He did." Beth spoke readily enough, but she hung back. Watchful. There was something a little alarming about the woman, a little strange - but as with Carol, no sense of any danger.

Not to her, anyway.

She ducked her head. "Say thankya. For getting us here in time."

The woman shrugged and picked up the sword again. It was a beautiful weapon - a long, graceful swoop of thin steel - and it looked every bit as lethal as Daryl's guns. There was, in fact, something about it that was very much _like_ the guns. The same sense of age. Of the accumulation of long-practiced skill. It too was a little alarming.

"Couldn't just leave you. Wouldn't be very friendly, would it?"

Beth breathed a laugh. "Strangers interested in bein' friendly?"

"Better to be friendly than not, if there's no reason not to be. You were half dead, your friend was almost all the way there. You weren't exactly in a position to do us harm." Another of those faint smiles. "And you had gunna worth takin', if you went to the clearings at the end of your paths after all. I liked the look of that bow."

Beth frowned and almost took a step back, suddenly unsure of her ground, but the woman's smile widened just a touch. "Don't matter. You're not yet bound for your clearings, so we'll not be touchin' your things." She extended a strong hand clad in a leather glove that left her fingers exposed. "I'm Michonne. Long days and pleasant nights, girl."

Bemused, Beth took the woman's hand and found it just as strong as it looked. Warm, solid, somehow reassuring. And she knew immediately, then, that she liked Michonne. Liked her, and not just because the woman had been one of the people who saved her life. Saved Daryl. No; she liked Michonne for reasons which evaded her completely. In spite of the oddness of her, and in spite of the death in her weapon.

It wasn't as though the guns had presented much of a problem, from the first.

"May you have twice the number. I'm Beth. Greene." She hesitated, then took a seat on the stone and looked at the sword. "Never seen anythin' like that before."

"No, Beth Greene?" Michonne lifted the blade and turned it so the sun caught its edge. "Never seen another like it either, tell ya true."

"How did you come to have it?"

Michonne lowered it to the whetstone and returned to sharpening. "That's a long story."

Beth smiled. "Ain't we got time?"

"Maybe. But I'm more interested in you, and you owe me." Michonne shot her a look, keen and a little sharp, though not unkind. "I'd know how you came to be in that place, in that state. For that's not the strangest thing I've seen in miles of travel, but it's a strange thing nonetheless."

Beth returned the look evenly, and she considered demurring. But the instinctive trust she felt was strong and so far hadn’t led her wrong, and Michonne was right. There _was_ a debt here, of a kind.

And there were certain things she could leave out. The Man in Black, for one. _Walter._ She didn't want to speak of him. When she so much as thought of him it was as though a shadow fell over her, just behind her, pursuing her at a distance but with a kind of nightmare relentlessness.

Walter had seemed primarily interested in Daryl. But she knew – in that same strange way of knowing – that it wasn’t so. The way he had spoken of her.

Well. He wasn’t here now.

"Alright." As Michonne sharpened her sword until the edge seemed to slice the air, Beth told her.

~

Dressed in his own clothes, Daryl felt almost himself again. Almost.

He stood for a moment, shoulders square, feeling how his own body held up and how it might move. The guns and the belts lay on the bed; later he might put them on and take stock of other things, but of more immediate concern was the crossbow. He could get by with a single gun, he thought. Get by, when already he preferred not to use them at all. He could keep them both without using one.

Given that ridding himself of either was impossible. That path, taken, couldn't be left. Even if he followed it no further.

Moving slowly, gingerly, he lifted the arm on his bad side - his left side - and felt how the muscles of the shoulder flexed, how the skin stretched. He didn't make it very far before pain flared, dull and hot, and he winced and lowered it again. The source of the pain was the stretch of the skin, and once the skin healed that would be less of a problem. But there would be scar tissue, and there was whatever had been done to what lay beneath the skin itself. The flesh beneath had been torn just as badly. The effects of that damage… He couldn’t yet be sure.

He was a quick draw. Very quick. _Quick_ was insufficient to describe the way he could move when the moving was necessary. Now, with one hand, that quickness might be lessened, and fractions of a second could be the difference between the path and the clearing at its end.

Well. Little to be done about that. And at least it wasn't his dominant hand.

He picked up the crossbow, hefting it, then lifted and aimed it. He could also do this quickly, raise and aim and loose a bolt all in a single smooth motion, though not so quick as he could draw the guns. And though he felt a twinge of fear that all that speed would be gone, the bow was up and aimed in the time it took him to blink twice. There was pain, and this time he let out more than a wince, but he could tell when he healed fully the time would be halved. If he was not as fast as he had been, he would be near to it.

So. One of the guns. He laid the bow down and pondered things in general.

"Never thought to see another."

Daryl froze.

He froze entirely; he went cold, felt himself sharpening at angles as if he were growing thorns. The cause was the words and how they were spoken, the cadence, the rhythm of the speech, but there was also the voice itself, and there were layers upon layers of familiarity swept up that voice. _Deep_ familiarity. A wave of tangled emotion that reeled him back and stunned him, more of it and more thickly intertwined than he could hope to understand.

That voice. That _man_.

And he knew, more surely than he had known since he first saw the girl on the farmhouse's porch, that the wheel of Ka had found him again. That it was poised to roll over him.

Slowly, he turned and looked toward the door.

The man was not especially tall - no taller, really, than Daryl was. Nor did he look remarkably strong - if anything, his build was almost slighter than Daryl's own. But there was a way about him, a sense of presence, of sheer force of will; there was no way to describe it except to say that he was more _real,_ more _there_ than any other man Daryl had ever met. He filled the space around him and made it his own.

And his face.

Lightly bearded, no particular hardness in his features. Nothing indicating danger or threat. He looked like a man whose face might light up when he smiled, and whose smile might be wide and warm.

But his eyes were the eyes of a hawk.

Slung low on his hips, holstered in crossed belts, were two enormous guns.

"Long days and pleasant nights," he said, his voice mild. "I'm Rick Grimes. You're Daryl Dixon, so I'm told. Been wantin' to meet you for a while. Since when I first came across you, you weren't exactly in a state to give me a proper greetin'."

Daryl said nothing. He didn't offer the traditional response. He offered no response at all. He simply stared. And his eyes narrowed.

This was a bad thing. Bad for so many reasons. Bad for reasons he thought, as yet, he only half understood.

Rick nodded at the bed. At the guns. "Believed I was the last. It's a pleasure to be wrong."

Still Daryl said nothing. If this truly was Ka, if this was the turning of its wheel, it was inescapable. Unstoppable. It was the natural extension, he saw, of that first trap of the farm, of the bloody trap in the yard under the Demon Moon, of every trap in twenty years, of everything that had taken him and dragged him through that time, along all those lost roads and through dead towns and ruined halls and across the paths of the dead. The truth he knew but tried over and over to ignore: every time he made to take his course in his own hands, it redirected him. Remade that course like men altering the way of a river.

So it had ever been. Since he first took up the guns. Since they were placed in his hands by the brother he loved and lost and who had ruined him.

"Hile, gunslinger," Rick said softly. "Now we will hold long palaver."


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So when I started this - as often happens - I knew something was going on, but I didn't quite understand all of that thing, or the logic according to which it was happening, or why it was important. 
> 
> And - as often happens - that part sort of figured itself out. So now I get to play with it. Which is fun. 
> 
> /vague

 

 

11

 

"You're mistaken, sai."

Rick tilted his head. The calm didn't leave his face; he looked as if he was certain he had merely misheard. "Don't see how that can be."

"You don't gotta see. You are."

"Cry your pardon, then." Still even, still mild, but a look slipped under the surface of the expression he wore, something sharper and more watchful, and something that wasn't in the least convinced. And Daryl thought _Caught._

_Deer in the sights._

"Still somethin' to see the guns. Can I ask how you come to have 'em?"

"Prefer you didn't." Daryl stepped forward; he didn't want this to be a test of wills, didn't want it adversarial right from the start, but diplomacy had never been his strong point, and while he might be prepared to have this conversation with Beth...

This man hadn't been through the dark with him. And this man was what he was.

Rick tilted his head again, almost a nod. _Alright._ He didn't move, and he crossed his arms - a stance which might seemed posturing when taken by someone else but which he made relaxed, secure. "Good to see you up and movin', anyway. Was sure you wouldn't make it back here at all, way you were when we found you."

Daryl inclined his head slightly. Whatever else he felt, this had to be acknowledged. Sometimes manners were of consequence and sometimes they weren't, and in twenty years he had nearly learned to tell the difference. "Thankee-sai."

Rick waited for a moment, as if expecting something else, then offered him a faint smile. "Don't say much, do you?"

"Don't got much to say."

"I got no cause to make you." Rick moved into the room, not directly toward but to the side of where Daryl stood. Daryl watched him, his gait and the way he held himself, still rocked back by wave after wave of familiarity and trying, best as he could, to keep it hidden. Waves of _knowing._ The way his father had moved. And - a bit, though there had been resistance there as well - his brother. What they had been taught made its way into the muscles, the bones, and remade the body into its own image. An image centuries old.

There was no mistaking it.

Rick halted again, and Daryl didn't miss the way his gaze flicked back to the bed, the guns. The bow, as well. "Suppose Carol told you this isn't just a friendly call. You wanted to see some things. Know some things."

Right to the point. Daryl's feelings about that were mixed. For the moment he supposed he would regard it as a fortunate trait, though he had already seen how it might become a problem. "Yar. This place. How it is what it is." He shook his head, once, and dropped his voice a touch. "Shouldn't be. Should it?"

"No," Rick said simply. "No reason to keep that close. _They_ don't. Not to folk who find themselves here, not when they prove trustworthy. But we've found there are reasons why they're set so apart, and those reasons are... complicated."

 _Interesting._ "You don't speak as if you're one of 'em." But of course, he thought, he - _they,_ whoever _they_ were - wouldn't be. Not with the guns. Not with what Daryl knew the man must be after, carrying them the way he did.

Was almost sure. Perhaps he was wrong. That would be a good thing.

"We're not. Passin' through. Michonne and me. You'll meet her later, I'm sure. She should probably come with us, truth be told. Good not to leave here without numbers, and I doubt you're strong enough to make good use of... what you got."

Daryl leaned back against the foot of the bed's frame and gave Rick a shrug. Half a shrug. It was what he could comfortably manage. "I'm well enough."

Rick shook his head, a gesture that said _oh, come now._ "Bravado ain't much use here. Me and Michonne, and that'll do just fine."

"Is it dangerous?" This, he realized, might not be the best idea, but it was his first instinct, and it wasn't just self-preservation. Wasn't that at all. It was deeper even than that, the kind of urge he had - perhaps foolishly - been letting rule a great deal of what he did since Ka in its twisted sense of humor threw him and Beth together.

And foolish or not, when it came to his instincts he usually defaulted to trust.

"Dangerous?" Rick arched a brow. "No. Wouldn't say that. Least not if you're smart about it. Why?"

"The girl who was with me. Beth. I'd bring her along."

"No reason you shouldn't. Might be wise she see it too. If she's as observant as you are I'm sure she's wonderin'. Where is she now?"

"Out. Walkin'."

Rick nodded. And for a moment he said nothing else. That sharpness hadn't left his gaze, and now Daryl felt it moving over him in a way it hadn't before, gauging, evaluating. He stood and bore the scrutiny; in Rick's position he would likely do the same, and in any case he was giving as good as he was getting. Had since Rick walked into the room. Because there was no sense pretending this wasn't what it was: two predators circling, learning each other, not ready to fight - at least not yet - but wanting to know everything needed in case the fighting became necessary.

And there was more to it than that. Part of the deep formation he knew Rick had been through just as he had - though perhaps more kindly. Part of training so profound the word _training_ was insufficient to capture the sense of it.

They were knowing each other - clearly and rapidly - not so that they could fight _each other_ but so that, if needed, they could fight _together._ As all men with guns had done for hundreds upon hundreds of years.

Perhaps his father had tried to set him and Merle against each other. But that, first and foremost, was not what he had taught them to do.

That was not what ka-tet was.

"Speak plain, do it please ya." Rick spoke low, still mild, but his tone had undergone a change - subtle but impossible to miss. He would accept nothing he interpreted as evasion, and he would tolerate nothing he sensed as a lie. "Whatever you claim to be or not to be, let's at least have things straight between us. How did you come to be by the ruins?"

"We went under the mountain," Daryl said - unhesitating. Honesty was better here, he knew it at once, and there was no reason he could see not to say.

"Why?"

"Driven. By muties. Wolves but worse than wolves."

"I seen 'em. Not near here, luckily. But around." Again that tilt of the head, and an accompanying increase in the keenness of his stare. "What did you see there?"

"Little. Almost nothin'." Daryl gave him a smile thin as a blade. "Slow mutants, before our lantern died."

"That all?"

Daryl was quiet a moment. There was a logic to these questions, though he couldn't yet discern exactly what it was. Rick was asking them almost as if he expected the answers Daryl was giving him, and was only looking for confirmation of what he already knew. And he felt then, all at once and so intensely that for a moment he almost couldn't draw breath, that he and Rick were speaking in a rhythm - _thinking_ in a rhythm - which was precisely complementary. Nearly a harmony. It felt a little like they were at odds, or might be - but it was also pleasurable. It felt _right._ It might simply be the way they had both been taught... But he wasn't sure.

And that was terrifying.

"No. Saw other things. Things built, should've been impossible. Saw wonders."

"The Great Old Ones."

Daryl nodded.

"We didn't try to go in when we found the place. Seemed inadvisable. So we were right to stay clear."

Again, Daryl allowed himself a thin smile. "Wouldn't recommend it, no." He paused, considering, then pushed again. If Rick was asking questions and Daryl was content to answer them, well and good, but he wasn't going to be the only one doing the answering. Once, perhaps, he would have - faced with this man and this situation. But things had changed. Things were changing all the time, faster and faster.

The world was moving ever on.

"You're a gunslinger. Trained. Trained as in Gilead."

"Not in Gilead," Rick said quietly. "But aye. It's so."

"Your father, then."

Rick laid a hand on the butt of his right gun, not to draw or to threaten to do so but, it seemed to Daryl, as a sign of respect - more for himself than for anyone else. Then he touched his closed fist to his forehead and - very slightly - bent his knee. When he next spoke, it was with all the formality and all the grace of the High Speech, and it sent a chill down Daryl's spine.

"I am Richard Grimes, son of Carl, and as I can I keep the Way of Eld. I gave you assistance because I am bound to do so. Because I remember the face of my father. And because I believed I was the last who ever would."

He raised a hand and pointed at the guns on the bed. "What other sense should I make of those, except that I was wrong?"

"You weren't wrong," Daryl said - soft, and he found - somewhat to his surprise - a little sad. As if he wished he could have given a different answer. Which he had never in his life felt before. "I ain't no gunslinger."

Rick only looked at him in silence for a time, and the time seemed long. At last he let out a breath - not quite a sigh. "You don't seek the Tower."

So here it was. The thing Daryl had perceived coming at him with all the force of a boulder crashing down a mountain, all the cold certainty of looking up and seeing it plunging toward one's head. This question, and the answer he would have to give, and everything it would mean.

"No."

"I do," Rick said immediately - not an argument. Simply a statement of fact.

"I know it."

"I expect you do." Rick was quiet a moment longer. Then he shook his head, his arms once more crossed over his chest. He didn't look quite incredulous, but he looked as though he would prefer to not believe what he had heard. "Daryl, son of Will. My father told me 'bout him. The only one who ever went west without bein' sent. What he ran from. What he did. Farson's man, in secret. If Roland had known." He spoke slowly, relentlessly, and almost entirely without emotion. Once Daryl might have launched himself at him. Now he stood and took it without a word.

 _He_ hadn't known. Not what his father had been running from, not for sure. But then, somehow he had. He always had. There is a bitterness and a self-loathing only treachery can sow in someone's heart, and that was a lesson Daryl learned before nearly all others.

"Never knew he had a son."

"He had two," Daryl murmured.

"Where is he? Your brother?"

Daryl shook his head.

"Dead?"

"No. Just..." He let out a ghost of a laugh. "Just gone."

A strange look came over Rick's face, then; whatever incredulity and faint displeasure had been there vanished completely, and its place was something almost gentle. More than sympathy. Rick was looking at him and _seeing_ him, seeing him very well, and for the first time since Daryl had first felt Rick's gaze, he wasn't sure he could bear it.

Not even Beth looked at him quite like this.

When Rick moved closer, he almost shied away. Ka wasn't only a wheel; Ka was rope that bound. He had felt those bonds with Beth, had felt and understood and guessed some of what they might mean. How he had been pulled to her, how as soon as he saw her there was no other way things could have ended. Now here were those bonds again, and they held him fast.

He wanted to run, and knew he could not.

"Hear me very well," Rick said - so soft it was almost a whisper. "I don’t know what made you feel the way you clearly do. I don't know why you'd deny what you clearly are. But I know you got the guns. And that means no matter how you feel, some part of you knows it too."

For a second - a second that might have been a minute that might have stretched into a full hour - the air between them was cold and heavy and still.

Then Rick moved back and turned away. "C'mon. We'll find Michonne and your Beth, saddle up and ride out. And you'll see what there is to see."

He went toward the door, not looking over his shoulder. Daryl watched his receding back, still cold. Something that went beyond fear.

_Beth was enough. Please, not this too._

Then it was gone, and he couldn't even completely remember what he felt. He stood there, a little confused. Then he made to follow.

But he went back for the bow, though there were no more bolts to loose.

And he went back for the guns.

~

Like Golan itself, the horses - three brown mares - seemed unnaturally healthy, and they were in fine spirits. But as Beth looked at them - as she swung herself up in front of Daryl while Michonne and the man who had identified himself as Rick took the other two - she couldn't help thinking of Mary, tired Mary, and wondering what had become of her, loosed into a world that had grown a good deal less kind. Wondering if she had managed to make some kind of a life for herself, away from the farm she had always known, or if the refuge they had found for her had failed her in the end.

In practical terms she knew it didn't matter. But even now she was not entirely practical. Counter to sense, she felt there was value in that, that she should hold onto it if she could.

In any case, hadn't the same thing happened to her? And so far, wasn't she doing well enough?

In spite of what seemed like a concerted effort on the part of this world to kill her.

Traveling in procession - Michonne leading - and in silence, they passed the mill and left the better-kept street for a rougher gravel road that curved around a bend. Here the rocky slopes on either side of their way steepened still further, and the thing became a narrow gorge. Beth eyed it, considering it and what it implied and the fact that the village itself lay in a pocket valley with only one real outlet, and then Daryl leaned close and murmured in her ear.

"Easy to guard. Also good for gettin' trapped in."

She nodded and didn't reply.

There was also Rick. She wasn't sure what to make of Rick. She still liked Michonne, though in all their talk by the creek she hadn't managed to get much more out of the woman about herself or about why she was there. But Rick... She just didn't know. The instant she saw him standing on the porch she felt the same pull as with Michonne, and also a sense of _doubling,_ as if she was seeing things from more than one perspective at once, through more than one set of eyes. Someone she knew, standing on a porch and looking at her - and then she got it, made the connection, remembered that first strange day with Daryl and had to fight back a shiver.

She thought they had found a place of calm, of refuge. Then she had wondered. Now wonder was suspicion, and still she couldn't identify any clear source.

And there was how Daryl was around him. Quiet - not that it was unusual for him to be so, but there was a different quality in it. Not withdrawn, exactly, but a strong and immediate sense that he was caught between unease, respect... and a kind of fear.

She felt he knew Rick. Or... Not knew. But there was something _there_ between them, and while at first all these different kinds of knowing had surprised and worried her, now there were almost entirely frustrating. It would be good, for once, to know something with those deep instincts it seemed she possessed and to know _why_ they were there.

 _Ka,_ she thought. She knew the word, had been raised knowing it as everyone did - fate and destiny and its turning wheel, and also spirit, the force of a life, and how it was bound up in its own path. But it had been abstract. God had seemed more real and more immediately powerful. Now she was reconsidering everything, and she thought of the bonds she felt between her and Daryl, pulling them tighter and tighter together toward some unknown end, and she thought there was something here that went far beyond anything she had been taught about a legendary _Man Jesus._

She thought of _ka-tet._

They rode on, and gradually the gorge widened and the steep walls became less steep, little more than hills. Then one of them dropped away to the right, and they were looking out at a lower stretch of land - flatter, lying down below a series of rolling foothills covered in the same endless pines. For a moment she thought she was looking out over the dry country she and Daryl had first crossed, but then she saw the land wasn't dry but grassy. Plains. Golden grass in the sunshine, miles of it with only small groupings of trees here and there. Far too small to be called woods.

They had nearly crossed the mountains, she realized. They had come out on the other side, and could reach those lands if they wished. When it came time for them to leave Golan.

When it came time for them to leave. She realized all at once that she had simply assumed. Daryl's arm was around her again, holding her steady in the saddle; she hadn't pushed him away, though she could ride very well and was perfectly capable of doing for herself. Together as they had been from the first. She would move on with him. On to whatever came next.

She wasn't sure what she felt about that.

Then they rounded a bend, and she forgot her feelings and her lack of certainty.

She had first seen the structure in the dimness of starlight and then the brighter dimness of the dawn. The two days that followed had been clear and bright, but she had barely noticed the thing from which they had emerged, had barely looked. All her attention had been focused on Daryl, on caring for him, on trying to save him, and finally on the task of being with him when he died, the task of giving him something like comfort and peace, and preparing to follow him to her own end.

Now she saw it very well. And it turned her blood to ice.

She had initially thought it was tall - maybe two stories. Now she saw it was more, that it was five - perhaps six or seven when it had stood intact, long and blocky and entirely of concrete, or something like it. It was half fallen, large parts of it crumbled away and exposing the empty ruin of its floors, massive and gaping holes at intervals that she supposed might have been windows. On its flat top - its roof, once - were the remains of high metal towers, all spindly and crossed with beams, very like the one she had seen on that first bunker by the dam. Also like that one, loose cables hung from a few of the beams and lay coiled around them. And, fallen, two things that looked like the skeletons of immense _bowls,_ things out of which a giant might eat.

The door out of which they had emerged was small and to the side, one that had probably been little-used by whoever had built the place, and there was a much larger entrance some way away, its opening wide and high and looking far too much like a mouth. And set over it, half fallen and faded so badly it was difficult to read in its entirety:

NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS LTD.  
SOUTHEAST TERTIARY HYDROPOWER STATION 5C  
LONG TERM STORAGE

She shivered. More than shivered; she _twitched_ as if someone had stuck her with a pin. Immediately she worried Daryl might ask her why - somehow that wasn't a question she wanted to answer - but his arm only tightened around her and released her again.

He felt it too. She was certain. And it was more than the fact that the place had nearly killed them.

She realized they had halted, and Rick had guided his horse closer to them. He wasn't looking at them but at the building, and his mouth was drawn tight.

"It's an evil place," he murmured. "Worse than we thought if you're tellin' the truth about it."

"We're tellin' the truth," Daryl said, and he sounded a little sharp. "Why would we lie?"

"I can think of reasons." Rick glanced at them, but there was no challenge on his face. He turned his horse forward again and gestured. "This way. It's not much further."

He rode on ahead. Michonne hung back, and as Daryl nudged their horse back into an easy walk she gave them both a nod.

"He doesn't think you're lyin'," she said quietly. "He's cautious. It's his way. But if he thought you were trouble you'd know it by now."

"Who _is_ he?" Beth hadn't asked it directly, not of her and not of Daryl, but now she couldn't hold back the question.

She hadn't missed the guns he wore. From those, she could draw her own conclusions.

"You probably already know some of it," Michonne said, as if reading her thoughts. "The rest... In the end he's just a man. He's tryin' to do right by the world. The world has a way of makin' that a difficult thing."

"Why are you with him?"

Michonne offered her a faint smile. "Turns out we do well together. Ka saw to that, soon as we took to fightin' back to back. His aims and mine happen to fall in step. What he's lookin' for. What he's tryin' to do."

"And what's that?"

Michonne opened her mouth as if to answer, but Beth felt Daryl shake his head, cutting her off. She felt a swell of annoyance and turned, trying to look at him, but again he shook his head. "Told you I'd tell," he said softly, speaking only to her. "I will."

She wasn't satisfied. But she made herself be so. And so close to that place, that place of darkness and horror and death...

Perhaps she didn't want to hear it anyway. Not then. Later, when they were well away, might be better.

They moved on, and the building fell behind them and the air seemed to ease and brighten. The ground to their right continued to drop away, and the pines spread back from the road. The road itself didn't look well-traveled, but neither was it especially overgrown, so _someone_ must make use of it. Golan, she imagined. If it was as isolated as it appeared, she wasn't sure who else would. Though where they would be going...

Then they rounded a final bend, turned off the road into what looked like a side path, and she saw instantly what they had come to see.

It was a fog.

It hung there in a small, rocky gully, swirling, silver-green and almost shining in the sun. Its edges were semi-transparent, but very quickly it became opaque, and there was a sense of _depth_ to it, as if it might go much further in than it initially appeared. It was strange, a little frightening, but it was also attractive in a way which wasn't entirely comfortable. It captured Beth's gaze, held it. It was suddenly difficult to look away, how it drifted and shimmered. And it was making a sound, high and constant but also warbling gently - Beth thought it might be unpleasant if it was just a little different, but instead it was bearable. More than bearable. There was something almost musical about it.

"It's-" Daryl started, sounding astonished, and Rick finished the sentence for him.

"A thinny. Aye. We were surprised, too. What it does for the town, anyway. Never seen anything like it."

The horses nickered softly, stamped just a bit. They didn't seem about to spook and bolt, but they were clearly uneasy. Daryl drew in a breath. "I'll be damned."

Beth looked from Rick to Michonne. Another unfamiliar word. "What's a thinny?"

Rick shot Daryl a look. "She don't know?"

"She lived her whole life on a farm," Daryl said evenly. "She ain't no fool. But there's stuff she ain't seen."

"Can speak for myself, say thankya." Beth didn't try to keep the irritation out of her voice. "What _is_ it?"

It was Michonne who answered. "World's movin' on, girl. You know that much for sure."

"Hard to miss."

"Yar. This here, this is what happens when it moves. World itself gets _thin._ Walls between things start breakin' down. Everything wears away. Light, air, the ground... Even time. Nothin' in there is the way it should be."

 _The world is moving on._ Since she had been small - since her earliest memories - Beth had heard the saying. It had never been explicitly explained to her, but she knew well enough what it meant. That things were falling apart. That the center was not holding - some unknown center, but didn't there have to be one? Wasn't there always a center? The slow decay of Jael, the decay of other places she had only heard of and never seen, and the mutants, the poison in the ground and water... That was the movement of the world. But somehow she never thought it might mean _this._

That things were literally falling apart. That the center was literally failing to hold.

"I've seen 'em," Daryl was saying. "Not many times, but passin' through here and there... Yar. Once saw a man pulled into one." But his voice was fading as the silver shimmer caught Beth's attention once again. Easily, unthinkingly, she slipped down from the horse and walked forward, her head cocked. Because was there sense in that constant, swirling movement? She believed there was. Sense that called to her, a pattern which somehow she had to understand.

"So what's this got to do with Golan?"

"No one understands it," Rick said. "Not to the full. But now and then... things come through. Things no one ever seen. Sometimes only puzzles that serve no purpose, but other times useful things. Clothes made of better cloth than anyone here ever saw. Once or twice food - dry, but flavorful. Safe to eat. And once a whole crate of what turned out to be medicine - better medicine than I ever heard of. Except in stories. Sorcery, some said, only sorcery that _worked_. Stuff that drove away infection, killed fevers. No one could read the words writ upon it, so no one knew what to call it. The idea of magic had a way of stickin'." He paused. "That's why you're here. Walkin' and talkin' and not in the ground."

Beth was still listening, but Rick's voice was continuing to fade, to take on less and less importance, and when Michonne spoke and Daryl answered she didn't make out their words at all. What mattered was the _pattern._

The pattern that was... a shape. Which was not silver or green or anything between the two but instead a vague pink. Pinker, deepening as it became clearer.

No, not pink. It was... It was...

It was _red._

It was a deep red, a blood red, emerging from the fog like a brilliant rising sun. It was _beautiful_ , so lovely it seemed to reach into her chest and seize her heart, and she gasped softly, in pain... and in something close to ecstasy. Because it was not simply there, beautiful in sight, but all around it the warble of the thinny had become a faint, gentle chorus of song, an unseen choir which was growing louder and louder with each step she took. No words, none that she could make out, but it was a song of infinite complexity, infinite depth and range, a song that filled the world.

It was a rose.

Small, delicate, so _real_ that it was like a blow against and inside her head, growing in grace and painful beauty in a small clump of purple grass.

When she knew that, the hand that cupped her heart _squeezed,_ not like it aimed to hurt her but like an embrace, like all the love she had ever felt, like Daryl's hand in hers. This last thought came and went in an instant, and she was only passingly aware of it. All she knew was that she loved the rose, loved it desperately, and she had to reach it where it grew in its cloak of green and silver. She had to fall on her knees and cover it, do what she could to protect it.

Because it was in danger. Because something was _wrong._ She realized it in a wave of terror that almost overwhelmed her unspeakable joy; it might all go terribly wrong, was in fact on the very cusp of doing so, and when it did...

Someone was crying her name. Almost a scream. But it didn't matter. Only the rose mattered. She was so close, and then she did fall to her knees, did reach for it, trembling, shaking as if gripped and torn by a great wind-

Arms around her, a body so hard against hers the impact knocked the breath from her. She thought distantly of the fire, of Daryl practically tackling her and dragging her back and away from the burning house and her burning father so violently that he hurt her. But no; the _rose,_ she had to reach the _rose..._

And Daryl's hands reached hers, and held them, and the world burst open and fell apart.

She saw everything. In the heart of the rose a sun, _many_ suns, so many suns to light so many worlds, worlds uncountable. And she was crashing toward one of them, unstoppable, falling like a stone, falling with Daryl in her arms and with her locked in his, falling

into

_and the dead walking and the city burned and they came and the little boy shot and the girl in the barn and everyone dead and killed and the knife and the mirror and the blood and the farm on fire and the running and the prison and the singing and the dead and all the dead and all the killing and the bad man the very bad man and daddy daddy's leg all gone and the baby and him and him and everyone sick and dying again and daddy's head rolling and no and the shooting and the screaming and we gotta go beth and we all got jobs to do and we should do something and you're a tracker and they were dead and he was there and the golf club and the peach schnapps and the still and the moonshine and the game and maybe I coulda done somethin' and his tears and the porch and the shine of the moon and the fire and the trap and the tombstones and the serious piggyback and the white trash brunch and the dog and the coffin and the candlelight_

_and_ oh

 _and_ I'm not gonna leave you

 _and_ you're gonna miss me so bad when I'm gone Daryl Dixon

 _We make a door,_ she thought with perfect wonder. She was curling into him, him into her, impossibly close, not even their skin between them anymore, and it was so terrifying and so wonderful and she never wanted it to end. _We_ are _the door._

And everything was white.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When is a door not a door?
> 
> When it's an interdimensional gateway, duh.

 

 

12

 

Voices.

Daryl knew them. They were all around him - a confusing mess of them, turning and tangling in a way that was almost painful. He wanted to understand what they were saying, felt somehow that it was important, but more than anything he wanted to drift here in the white, in the White, drift with Beth and forget everything else. Forget the road. Forget the dark. Forget even his brother.

Forget the Red.

Forget the Tower.

But he was being pulled at. By... Not by hands. More than hands, deeper, _worse,_ not just pulling but _tearing_ at him, and as he tried to twist away from them he caught a glimpse in a flash of hard, agonized sunlight: a dead face, rotting away on itself, jaw mindlessly snapping and milky eyes rolling. He saw the strings of its hair, its split lips, the pale bone where the flesh had been ripped away from its cheek and brow. He saw its hands - yes, they were hands - groping at him, pulling at his clothes, and they were joined by others, all dead and all rotten, skin peeling back and flesh dropping away even as they tried to take him.

Maybe he should have been screaming. But he wasn't. Because the hawk was circling, regarding everything with its coolly evaluating eye, and the bow was in his hands and his hands were death, and they sent a bolt into the head of the closest one, pulled it free and used it to spear another through the eye, used the limb of the bow to brain two more.

No guns. Just the bow. The weapon he loved, which loved him. The familiarity punched all the breath out of him - but why should it? Wasn't this how it was, how it always was now? Rick was ahead of him, turning back to cry out something he couldn't hear; to his right was Michonne with her sword, and there were others, he knew there were others very close by, and he _knew_ them, these were his _friends,_ his _family..._

_Ka-tet._

It struck him in the head, in the chest. That word, that thing, that he both knew and did not know. So familiar as to be a piece of his heart and so alien as to be total nonsense. He felt a wave of dizziness, of vertigo, as he was _doubled._ He tripped, nearly stumbled back, was dangerously close to falling, and thinking all the while _there's a door there's a door_

_the door is open_

The door was open and his hands were empty, even as the bow filled them, and that was _wrong._

The world turned sickeningly, spun in waves of strange green light, and strong hands had him, dragged him upright, and he saw a man before him, a man holding onto him, saying something, a face... A face so well-known and so well-loved.

And he thought _My dinh. My ka-dinh._

_I will follow you to death itself._

But there was something wrong. Even as Rick held onto him, even as they were all still running - killing and running, so it ever was - he was turning back, trying to see who else was there, searching desperately over each rushing body and each blurred face.

Her. He didn't see her. She wasn't there.

So it was wrong. It was all wrong. Fear lanced through him, stabbed at him and then stabbed again, and once more he almost fell. It was _wrong._ She should _be there._ She had to be there, otherwise... What of the _door?_

_Not yet. This isn't the right time. Not yet._

He was running. He knew he was, knew Rick was no longer holding onto him but forging ahead, raising his gun to fire. The dead were all around them, swarming, but he felt it all falling away. Fading. Growing less distinct, more and more like a dream from which he was rapidly emerging. The sun through the trees, the stench of decay, the groans and hisses of walking corpses, the cries of his group, his friends, his

_ka-tet_

family - even those seemed distant now. Because behind him was a door, and it was swinging open again, and through it was not darkness but _White._ Pulling. Pulling him back and down and up and _in_ all at once, and he knew she was there waiting for him and felt such an overwhelming sense of relief break open in his chest that it almost hurt.

She was there in the White waiting for him, and he would be with her again. So not everything was wrong.

Not yet.

He plunged down and up and into it, let it enfold him. He felt her arms, felt her body and how perfectly it fit with his, her hands and his and their fingers threaded - like keys in keyholes, turning and turning and _opening_ , because what was a door made to do but to open?

And to close.

He joined Beth in the White, found her and clung to her, and the door swung shut with a sound that shook every imaginable world to its very foundations - and was also utterly silent.

He joined Beth in the White and the White was all.

~

"Got him? Here, grab her- Grab _anything,_ it don't matter, just grab her! Or _it'll_ grab her! See any more? Gods, tell me that was the last one."

Hands on him - those hands again. Those hands he knew, hands he trusted. They were dragging at him, yanking at his shirt and trying to get him to move backward, and he made to do so. Whatever the reason, it had to be a good one. Later, he would worry about what it was.

Later.

_Beth._

He struggled against the silver-green fog that had settled over his mind, beating at it with invisible hands. He couldn't _see,_ nothing but vague hints of shapes, unreliable shifting beams of sunlight. What he felt now wasn't fear; it went beyond fear, beyond rage, into sheer desperation. Where he had been, what he had seen, what _she_ had seen, the glimpse of all of it before the door had swung shut, the dead and those other faces and... And all the suns, all those suns and all those worlds, and the heart of...

Of what?

Gods, what had they _seen?_

"Beth!" Now he was struggling against those hands just as much as he had - as he _was -_ against the fog. "Beth, I- She here? She alright?" He sounded half panicked in his own ears, but panic wasn't what he felt _._ What he felt was simple, base _need._ To find her, to be as close to her as he had been inside the fog, because just for an instant he had been with her in the hot, beating heart of the universe, and he didn't know how he was going to continue to exist if he couldn't find that again.

But she had also gone into the thinny. He remembered that, was remembering it bit by bit as the other thing bled away from him. The thinny, and he had seen another reach out with tentacles of mist and eat a man alive, and had heard of still more things like that happening. Thinnies were almost living, almost intelligent - so it seemed. They wanted things, they had intention, and perhaps they even had a kind of hunger. They could set traps. They could lure.

_But you know what you saw._

He shook off those strong hands and shoved himself to his knees, up to a crouch. The silver-green was lifting like fog in a warming morning, and he saw Michonne a few feet away, her arms around Beth's sagging body, pulling her back and away. For an instant he felt a crashing wave of terrible fear, because there was no telling what a thinny could take when it truly wanted to - but she was breathing, heaving with it, near gasping.

Rick was close, standing over him, but when he touched Daryl again it wasn't to hold him back but to help him to his feet. He took the help with a distant kind of gratitude and then pushed himself forward, urging his trembling legs into motion, erasing the distance between himself and Michonne. He knew she was staring at him, that Rick was staring at him; he could feel the pressure of their gazes (because he _knew them_ ) but he cared nothing for it. When he reached Michonne he tugged Beth free of her arms, pulled her to him and tilted her head up with one hand cupping her face.

Her eyes were open. Dazed, unfocused, her pupils unnaturally large. But open, and slowly becoming more aware. She pressed against him, still shaking a little, and leaned her forehead on his chest, and he simply curled his arms around her and let her, bore her up.

It wasn't like it had been. That closeness, the sensation of being _inside_ her in a way which had nothing whatsoever to do with bodies. Falling through worlds with her, time and space losing all hold on the both of them. It wasn't like that at all.

But it was something.

At last he lifted his head and looked at Michonne, looked at Rick. They were gazing back at him, their expressions both somber and confused. And a little stunned. Rick settled his hands on his hips - just above the guns - and shook his head.

"Thought you said she wasn't a _fool_."

"She ain't." The words came out rough, breathless, and as they did he knew it was hopeless. They hadn't seen what he had seen, what _she_ had seen - and had he seen everything she had? Really? Because something had drawn her in, and while he had caught a glimpse of it, he didn't think what he had seen was all of it. Before he reached her he had seen her face. How it was lit up, glowing as if she was looking into the heart of a fire, and lost somewhere between agony and joy. "She saw... somethin'."

He half expected Rick to scoff, but he didn't, nor did Daryl see any trace of it on his face. Instead his look of confusion faded, and something else took its place. Something colder, more watchful. He was taking it seriously, Daryl realized. That if she had seen something, it might not be just an illusion or a girl's overactive imagination.

"Did you see what it was?"

No. ...And yes. Daryl lowered his head, one hand combing through Beth's hair. Yes, he had, only at some point what he saw and what she saw had _diverged_ somehow, as if despite their impossible closeness they had - for a few fractions of a second that had stretched out into far more - lost each other.

But how to say that? How to say any of it? The glimpse of the countless suns, the countless worlds, the chaotic rush of voices and images and _memories_ , memories of things that never happened, all those strange little moments between them since he had first laid eyes on Beth all compressed into a single point in time.

And what he had seen then. The dead people, walking and hungry. Rick, only not Rick. The terrible, violent loyalty he had felt for the man. The terrible, wrenching love.

Not very much like what he was becoming dimly aware he felt for Beth. This was something which resided in a different part of his heart.

The part, perhaps, where Merle had once been.

It wasn't that he thought Rick might think him touched by the thinny and briefly mad. Rick, he knew, would likely believe him. He would likely believe all of it. He would believe, and then he would ask questions. And Daryl didn't know if he could resist giving him answers.

 _Ka-dinh._ He fought back a shudder, and the only response he gave was a shake of the head.

"Did _you_ see anything?" Michonne this time, and as Daryl turned his attention to her, he realized he had nearly forgotten she was there at all. But now her dark eyes were piercing, somehow more merciless than even Rick's were, and he felt certain she knew. Knew he was keeping something back.

And not just because he was a poor liar.

"Dreams," he murmured, dropping his gaze. "I saw dreams."

"What were they?"

Again he shook his head. "No sense in 'em."

In the periphery of his vision he saw Rick and Michonne exchange a glance, but neither of them pressed any further. Instead Michonne went to the horses - which had begun to stamp nervously - and took their reins, stroking their necks, trying to calm them. "Better if we go," she said over her shoulder. "Nothin' else to show 'em anyway. And that girl should get seen to."

"I'm alright," Beth murmured, though she didn't lift her head from Daryl's chest. "I just..." She trailed off and sighed hugely, and Daryl thought he heard a kind of deep regret in that sigh. A deep sadness, something that came from the hot core of her heart. She did raise her head then, looked up at him with eyes that were clear and keen, and all at once he felt a hand reach into him and tear at him, hook claws into every part of him and _yank._ He almost gasped, managed to hold it back, but it was its own kind of revelation, as terrible in its way as anything he had seen or felt inside the thinny.

He had known she was a trap. Had known it very nearly from the first. Now he began to see its outlines in great detail.

Soon, very soon, he would have some choices to make. Painful ones. But they wouldn't allow escape. He wouldn't be able to run.

_Turn aside, gunslinger. There is yet time._

"Even so," Rick said, and - strangely, Daryl thought, only somehow it was not so strange at all - he stepped forward and laid a hand on Beth's shoulder, and she didn't try to shake him off. "Can you walk?"

She nodded, and after another moment she stepped back. She was shaking slightly, but she seemed steady enough.

Daryl stood, unsure of what to do with his hands. Unsure of what to do with any of himself.

"Alright, then." Rick began to walk her toward the horses, not quite touching her, but close and clearly ready to steady her if she stumbled. Only once did he look over his shoulder, met Daryl's gaze, and Daryl had no idea how to read what he saw there.

After another moment he followed. And when Beth swung up in front of him and he slipped his arm around her, and she settled back against his chest and closed her eyes, he thought _Yes, I'll turn aside. Or I'll try. Not how you wished me to, you bastard. Not this new trap, not the damned Tower. I'll turn aside from all of it. For the first time in twenty years, I will._

But it was a lie. Part of him knew it. He was a poor liar. And not for the first time, he heard Walter o'Dim's spiteful peal of laughter.

~

Beth remembered little of the way back. By the time they reached Golan and the house, the sun was low and the valley was thrown into shadow. She was aware enough to notice that, and some other things she noticed with bizarre clarity: the circling of a swarm of gnats, the way a beam of late afternoon sunlight cut through a cloud of dust thrown up by the horses, the way the needles of a bending pine broke up that beam. The strange metallic glitter in the rocks over which they passed. The sharp cry of a boy as he ran through the street ahead of them, chasing a squawking chicken.

The slow, steady beat of Daryl's heart against her back.

When they halted in front of the porch, she had returned to herself enough to dismount without help, though as soon as her boots touched the ground a wave of exhaustion flooded through her. She felt as if the thinny had reached into her and pulled pieces of her free, pierced her and sucked her dry like an enormous spider - and something about that image was profoundly troubling.

But there had been something else. Hadn't there? Hadn't she seen something?

Hadn't she seen something _important?_

She had. She was sure of it. There had been... lights, voices, an awful sensation of falling, silver and green swirling all around her and stealing away all sense of up or down. Daryl, Daryl catching her, his arms around her and pulling her back.

But there had been...

She shook her head as she headed into the house. Behind her, Daryl was bidding Rick and Michonne a distracted goodnight. She didn't wait for him; she went up the wide staircase and down the hall to her room. Later she would talk to him. Later she was sure they would have things to say to each other. But for now... For now she was tired, more tired than she could remember being since they had emerged from under the mountain. If he called to her, she didn't hear him. By the time she reached her door she felt ready to drop.

But she paused, her hand on the handle. Staring at it.

The door.

All at once she was certain: when she opened it she would see a large, sunlit, grassy yard bounded on all sides by fences made of woven metal cables. She would see gardens and pens, and she would hear voices: men and women talking, the laughter of children. She would smell cooking meat and she would hear the disposition of chores, plans for _runs._ Through the fences she would see little groups of shambling, growling corpses, pressing themselves against the woven metal, but she would not fear them. She would step into the sunshine and there would be her sister, walking toward the gates with a gun in her hands and a handsome, dark-haired man by her side. Through the gates Michonne would be riding, her head up and proud and her sword at her back. There would be her father, speaking with Carol, both of them nodding. She would look out into the wide stretch of grass and there would be Rick, turning to nod to her, a hoe in his hand and no guns at his hips.

And then, there _he_ would be. Coming behind Michonne, not riding a horse like hers but something lower and faster, a _machine,_ all wheels and gleaming chrome and black, roaring like a beast. His bow would be slung over his shoulder - and he would also bear no guns.

And when he got close enough to see her standing in the doorway, he would give her a faint smile, almost not there at all, and something warm would pass through her. Like the sunshine but not of it. Something else.

As soon as she opened the door, there it would be. All of it, there in front of her, and when she stepped through and into that world she would be home. Eagerness bloomed in her, pressed against the inside of her skin, and she pulled in a hard little breath. Not her home, no - not quite. But _hers,_ all the same. A place where the world was also moving on, but where - as with the farm - they had found a way to keep what they had, and perhaps even make a little more.

All she could hope for. All she could want.

Her heart thudding in her chest, Beth opened the door.

There was the narrow bed. There was the nightstand, the basin and the pitcher. There were the curtains, still drawn aside for the day. There was a patch of reddish evening sunlight on the floor, sliding away into evening. There was her journal on the pillow, still open to the last page on which she had been writing.

She stood for a long moment, looking at it. She had no idea how to even begin to name what she felt.

At last she stepped inside. She was simply tired again - exhausted, her head and feet and entire body heavy. It wasn't even twilight, and she was dimly aware that she was hungry, but she undressed all the same and slipped under the blanket, drawing her knees up.

The last of the lingering sun touched her face. Her closed eyes. It turned the inside of her lids red and orange and ruddy gold - like a flame. Like dancing candlelight, she thought.

She was almost completely asleep when some remaining conscious part of her heard herself. Heard herself singing, little more than the softest of murmurs, almost inaudible.

 _and that, that's a relief_  
 _we'll drink up our grief_  
 _and pine for summer_  
 _and we'll buy a beer to shotgun_  
 _and we'll lay in the lawn  
_ _and we'll be..._

But there wasn't any more.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Closing in on the end of part 2. Which means we're (probably) over halfway done. Reader, I honestly kind of can't believe we've made it this far. 
> 
> But we still have a ways to go.

 

 

13

 

The next day he came to her with the guns.

She was just dressed, just ready for the day - for whatever the day would bring, which made her uneasy. The reasons for that were elusive, and that in itself made her uneasy. Whatever had happened the day before was even less clear than it had been before she fell asleep, and all that really remained - aside from a cascade of surreal, swirling images and the surreal, swirling dreams that had followed - was a strange interest in the door of her room. Shortly after waking she had gone to it, opened it in a kind of vague excitement - and there had been nothing on the other side but the hallway, still full of early-morning quiet.

No sunlit yard. No fences. No gardens or pens.

And not him.

She had closed it and gone back to the bed, sat down on it and looked at her hands, and felt a little dazed.

For some reason, her head was hurting.

Now she felt more awake, more herself. Whatever she had seen at the thinny, it was gone. What lay ahead was more rest, more healing for Daryl, and then eventually... More travel, she supposed. The plains she had seen beyond the mountain. And whatever lay past them.

The idea that she wouldn't go with him never entered her head at all.

There was also Rick and Michonne, but after the journey to the thinny, she wasn't certain how much more she wanted to do with them. She still liked Michonne, and she didn't think she exactly _disliked_ Rick so far as it went, but when the four of them were together something strange happened to the air, to the light and the sounds all around them - something a little like the thinny itself, truth be told. The sensation that the shapes and the order of things - the very logic according to which all of it was operating - were no longer entirely reliable.

Silly, probably. Just her imagination. But then... Maybe not. Because there were other things, weren't there? Things in the dark. Things moving, like monsters slinking through a little girl's darkened bedroom. Things from before - from when Daryl first came to the farm, and maybe, though she wasn't positive, things from even before that. None of them were clear, though at the time of their happening perhaps they had been, but they were still there, and when she turned away from the light and let herself feel them, they loomed over her. Indistinct but with enough weight and size that if they crashed down on her they would crush her.

So maybe it was better to keep mostly clear of Rick and Michonne, until they - or she and Daryl - moved on. She supposed they had no reason even to speak, at least not much. Nothing much that could be told from either end.

But then Daryl came to her with the guns.

He didn't knock, and while she was just turning to him and preparing a - decidedly mild - admonishment, she didn't mind very much, because after everything they had been through, they had to be past that. But then she saw the gunbelts in his hands, the guns, and whatever she had been about to say died on her lips.

Her gaze moved from them up to his face. She had no idea how to understand what she saw there.

Daryl came closer, inclined his head. It was oddly formal. Everything about him was - his affect, his stance. His voice. "You shot one of these."

She nodded. He wasn't asking her. She knew he had forgotten a great deal of what happened in the dark under the mountain, but he would remember that.

"You shot true." He paused, and somehow what he said next chilled her. "You shot like you were born to it."

She had no idea what to say to that. She could have denied it, and for a few seconds she almost did - how could she be born to it? She had barely even handled the shotgun. That had always fallen to Maggie.

But she remembered. How it had felt to take it from him - not as if she was doing something borne of pure desperate necessity, something that would, in any other circumstances, be a theft. Not clumsy, not awkward. She hadn't fumbled. She hadn't even hesitated. She hadn't _missed._

She shot true.

So instead she was silent, looking at him, and his gaze hardened, seemed to close in on her though he didn't move at all. He was thinking - she could see that well enough. Thinking deeply, and not untroubled. Since he told her to take the gun he hadn't spoken about it at all, but now that she considered it, of course he wouldn't have let it lie.

She didn't yet fully understand everything the guns meant. She didn't yet fully understand what it meant to carry them.

But she thought she understood enough.

At last he gave her a nod, lifted a hand and beckoned. "Come with me."

~

Daryl had asked Carol for permission to use the house's side yard, and had secured it. It was small and fenced, and beyond the fence was nothing but the creek and across it the steep hill and the trees. It was also removed from general view, which was desirable for a number of reasons. There was little that could be done about the sound, but he supposed one had to satisfy oneself when everything else had been addressed.

He wanted to keep away a casual audience, yes. But as he stood with Beth and surveyed the yard - and the row of six small white stones he had set on the fenceposts - he wondered who he was truly concerned about hiding from.

There were things he had to know. One particular thing. No choice could be made without it.

Beth looked at the posts, the stones, and turned to him with a quizzical expression. But there was a flash of realization in her eyes, and he guessed she already knew. What she thought of it was difficult to tell. He wasn't surprised; he knew she could keep things close when she wished.

Without a word, he held one of the guns out to her. She looked at it for a moment, frowning slightly.

Then she took it. And watching how she curled her fingers around the grip, he realized he was already certain.

He gestured at the fence. "You see yonder stones."

She nodded. She was curling both her hands around the grip now, doing to without him having to tell her - for the sake of steadiness, and bracing against the kick. Perhaps in time she wouldn't need to, but-

He stopped himself hard. No. At least not yet. Or...

This was more painful than he had expected.

"Take 'em all down. Try to do it in a single shot each." He gave her a small smile. "Shells are hard to come by. I'd not waste 'em when the wastin' can be helped."

She still looked faintly quizzical, but she walked forward until she was facing them squarely, he back to the side of the house. He followed her and stood behind her, surveyed her stance. It was good - natural - but still a little awkward, a little off-balance. And when she lifted the gun, it seemed to him that all the effortless speed and grace and sure aim from the mountain had faded. It was still there, but now it was covered by a layer of self-consciousness, and he realized that it had been the sheer extremity of every part of the situation that had lifted it away. She hadn't stopped to second-guess herself because she hadn't had the luxury of doing so.

Desperation had its advantages.

Gently he laid one hand on her shoulder and one on her waist, shifting the placement of her arm and spine. "Like that," he said, and leaned closer to her, looking down the sights. She moved according to the guidance of his hands, and that too... He saw it and knew.

And before he could stop them, the words were coming. They were deep inside him, as deep as his breath, and part of him understood with a wave of despair that he might be the greatest of fools to stand against the turning of Ka.

But he _was_ a fool. His father had always said. His father was a broken, fallen man, but his father had seen some things very well.

"There's a lesson," he said softly, and while he didn't slide into the High Speech, the rhythm and cadence of his voice was not unlike it. "A litany I was taught to say. I'll tell it to you. You'll say it back to me."

It came, and he could not hold it back. And with mild horror he realized he was changing the words, altering them for her.

_I do not aim with my hand. She who aims with her hand has forgotten the face of her father._

_I aim with my eye._

_I do not shoot with my hand. She who shoots with her hand has forgotten the face of her father._

_I shoot with my mind._

_I do not kill with my gun. She who kills with her gun has forgotten the face of her father._

_I kill with my heart._

He could feel her listening, like a touch on the back of his neck. He went through it with her again, line by line, and she repeated each word in a voice softer than his. Finally he removed his hands from her waist and shoulder and stepped back, taking a huge breath and feeling his stomach turn hollow.

"Say your lesson, Beth," he murmured. "Say it and be true."

"I do not aim with my hand," she said, and raised the gun once more. "She who aims with her hand has forgotten the face of her father. I aim with my eye."

"So it is," he whispered, the High Speech coming to him unbidden and unstoppable.

She thumbed back the hammer. "I do not shoot with my hand. She who shoots with her hand has forgotten the face of her father. I shoot with my mind."

"So it ever shall be."

"I do not kill with my gun," she said, and her voice was cold blue steel. "She who kills with her gun has forgotten the face of her father."

_No. Gods, no._

"I kill with my heart."

The gun roared. Daryl didn't have to watch each shot, didn't have to mark the six stones and see the six holes in space they left when Beth blew them into oblivion. He didn't have to see any of it at all. He knew, knew what she was, knew her very well.

He couldn't have seen, because his eyes were full of tears.

~

Very little had been surprising about the course of the day. So when he told Beth to give him the gun and to go - a bit short with her, and she gave him a look that was more irritated than quizzical - and turned, it was no surprise to see Rick leaning on the fence that ran parallel to the porch, looking at Daryl from beneath the brim of his hat.

There was no telling how much he had seen. But Daryl supposed he had seen enough. The gun in Beth's hands would have been more than sufficient.

It was somewhat gratifying, at least, to see that _Rick_ looked faintly surprised.

"You're trainin' her."

Daryl shook his head. Foolish, beyond foolish, but what could he do? Foolish it might be, but it was also not a lie.

At least not completely.

Rick let out a soft, incredulous laugh. "I heard her say the litany. You taught her, unless she knew already, in which case I'd wanna know what kind of _farm_ she grew up on. And she was shooting." He nodded at the place where the stones had been and were no longer. "She was shooting _very well."_

"Not trainin' her." Daryl didn't want this. He wanted to end this conversation, wanted to go inside and consider his next move. But as before, he found it impossible to do it. Not without leave. The fear he felt with Rick was - in its way - far deeper than the fear his father had put into him. But the rebellion that older fear had raised was entirely absent here. "Not ever."

"You know what it is to shoot like that." Rick's voice was flat, cool. Relentless. "Whatever you say you are or aren't, you clearly know. She was born to the gun, Daryl. I don't know how, wouldn't try to say. Things have gotten strange since the world started movin' on. But you know it same as I do. You're gonna stand there and deny it? To my face?"

The words were angry, but his voice was not. Yet Daryl felt the urge to duck his head, to cry this man's pardon for playing at being a fool. Because yes, about some things he was. But about this... No. No.

He might deny it. But he knew.

And in fact, he wasn't going to deny it at all.

He went to Rick, stopped barely a foot away from him, and met his eyes. There was no challenge in his, nor did he want there to be. But there was no sense in holding this back. It should be said. There should be no question about what he wanted, what he intended. Because now that Rick had seen them he might speak to Beth, and because Daryl already knew what Rick would ask them both before they took their final leave.

"Yar, she was born to the gun. No, I dunno how. But I'll not train her. You know why. You know where that path'll take her, once I set her on it."

Rick crossed his arms, tilted his head. For a moment he said nothing at all. Daryl stood - stood his ground - and knew he could do that much.

It was something.

"You said you didn't seek the Tower," Rick said.

Daryl shook his head, slow. "I saw it destroy my father." He took a breath, found his backbone, pushed ahead. "It's _his_ face I remember. I won't see her turned that way. Not ever."

"She's your woman."

"I-" Daryl began, a denial already on his tongue.

But it didn't come.

Rick gave him a thin smile. "Your girl, then."

Daryl's mouth tightened. "She's her own."

"Yes," Rick said softly. "I know it." His expression changed then, and was a bit like what Daryl had seen before: a gentleness that was nevertheless not at all kind. "You love her. I can see that much as well." He reached out and laid a hand on Daryl's shoulder, and while Daryl stiffened he didn't pull away.

He didn't want the touch. But with it, he felt himself returning to a kind of center

"I know you'd protect her if you can. But you can't. Not if she is what we both know she is." His voice was as gentle as his face, and just as hard. "It'll call to her. She'll go, once she knows the truth of it."

"I won't tell her."

"Can you really keep it from her?"

Daryl didn't answer. Since Rick began speaking, ice had been making its way through his gut, and now it had nearly taken all of him.

"If she's truly her own," Rick persisted, and finally Daryl lowered his head, squeezed his eyes shut.

She was. And while he might try to protect her...

He wasn't sure he could lie.

"Come _with_ us, Daryl." Rick didn't remove his hand; he tightened it, squeezing Daryl's shoulder as if he was a friend, a comrade. Which Daryl supposed he was, at least in Rick's mind. At least the latter. "You and her, both. When we go. Which we will, day after tomorrow. Yes, the road to the Tower is long, and yes, it's perilous. But there are _worlds_ to win. To _save._ "

Daryl shook his head, half in final defiance and half in despair.

"Then at least let the choice be hers. If she's not a child, don't treat her as one."

Daryl said nothing, moved not at all. He felt pushed against a wall, into a corner - not by lies or abuse but by careful, ruthless truths that he couldn't deny. Rick was right, yes - about all of it. Everything.

But oh, to spare her that. Not his woman, no... But the thought of her hurt, by that path and by what might lie at its end - worse, the thought of her _possessed_ by it, by the vision of it and every possibility it contained, run _mad_ with it. Worse even than death. A kind of living death from which there could be no return.

What she might sacrifice. What she might be willing to do. To become. For the _Tower_.

It killed his heart.

"I'll consider it," he muttered.

"I can ask no fairer," Rick replied, but Daryl was already pushing past him, head down. Head down, for he was a poor liar, and he knew that if Rick saw his eyes...

If Rick saw his eyes it would all be over.

~

"He's doing better," Carol said that afternoon, and shot Beth a sidelong smile. They were in the large, sunny kitchen of the house, folding laundry freshly taken from the line and laying it in baskets. Carol, it seemed, was responsible for almost all that went on in the house and did a great deal of the work, though three days previously Beth had met and briefly spoken to a thin, slightly nervous young man named Julan who was responsible for whatever surgery needed to be done, and his sister, an equally thin and nervous young woman named Jane who did most of the cooking and whatever housework Carol left to her.

"There isn't much need for us," Carol had said after. "Not here. This place isn't just for the sick or hurt, you understand - a lot of other business is conducted here. Or was. When folk came to Golan it was inn and town hall. But there's not much need for that either. Not now. As far as town hall goes..." She had shrugged. "There's a council of five. We meet now and then. But all's quiet enough so even that isn't needed much."

"Not much changes," Beth had murmured. She was again struck by the sensation of time having _stopped_ in Golan, or at least slowed down tremendously while the rest of the world outside moved on and on ever faster all the time. Once she would have found it charming, like something out of an old story: the magic village where all was well, where all was protected, where help and shelter might be found for wanderers. And in fact it _had_ been that for her and for Daryl - and, she guessed, for Rick and Michonne. But there was something wrong about it. Or, if not _wrong_ , something which didn't feel quite right.

Now that she had seen the thinny, heard what Michonne said about time... Some of it made a little more sense than before. Golan wasn't _in_ the thinny, true.

But it was very near.

Now she looked up when Carol spoke, lost once more in these thoughts, and took a few seconds to process what Carol had said.

"He's..." She smiled faintly. "Yar. For a time now."

"Will you be moving on? Or staying a time longer?" The question sounded casual, but Beth knew instantly that it wasn't. It came to a point.

"I mean... Movin' on, I guess. Said he was lookin' for his brother."

Carol nodded, laying aside a folded shift and moving on to a thin blanket. The fabric was unusual, Beth had noticed - woven with a fineness she had never seen before - and she wondered if it had come from the thinny. One of those strange things Rick said came through from time to time. "Said the same to me when I met him. So he hasn't found him yet."

Beth shook her head. What she knew now, and the many more things she expected... If she had been backed into a corner and made to confess, she would have said she wasn't sure Merle was a man who should be found.

But she got the feeling Daryl knew that. Knew it well. And didn't turn aside.

"We can't go that soon, anyway. He's not strong enough to travel."

"No?" Carol shot her a look, keen as her voice had been, and looking at her in the bright afternoon light which came spilling in through the kitchen's two large windows, it struck Beth again that this was no home-woman, there only for cooking and cleaning. This was a woman who saw and heard much, and might surprise anyone who underestimated her.

Might surprise them very badly.

"Are you sayin' he is?"

"I'm saying he may not let it make a difference either way. He gets it into his head it's time to move on, on is where he'll move." Carol's mouth tightened and she lowered her eyes to the blanket in her hands. She didn't look happy. "Like the world. No stopping either of 'em."

Beth was quiet a moment. Her thoughts where Daryl was concerned had already been somewhat confused, somewhat troubled - since the thinny, but before it as well. There had been peace of a kind right after the farm, and then there had been peace after the mountain, but always it swung back around to this. The feeling that there was something volatile between them, something prone to unpredictability. Something that was ever-tightening and pulling them together.

She knew she loved him. Of the specific nature of that love, she wasn't yet sure. But this wasn't even about love. It was about something more, something deeper - something with an edge of danger about it. A thread of darkness as black as what she had led them out of.

 _Ka,_ she thought, but no, not even that.

And she thought again of the door.

When he moved on, she would move on with him. She hadn't questioned it until it was pointed out to her. It made all the sense in the world to stay here in Golan, make a new life for herself. This was a kind place, a good place - whatever its strangeness. She shuddered every time she thought of the thinny, but there was no reason she should ever go near it. She wasn't a fighter. She wasn't a traveler. She was a farm girl, and this kind of quiet life was what she knew best, and it was surely where she would be happiest.

Everything had been taken away from her. She deserved happiness. Since she first laid eyes on Daryl it had been disaster after disaster. There was no reason to assume anything but more of the same lay in his path.

Yet when he moved on she would move on too.

Because there was the gun. The feel of the gun, its weight, the power her hand. Coiled like a snake, ready to strike. Like a bird of prey ready to dive. All thunder in its cloud prepared to give voice. All smooth wood and cold steel. The steel of the sword of Arthur Eld, if the story Daryl had told her was true.

How right it felt. When she had taken it under the mountain. When Daryl had given it to her, touched her, arranged her body so that it and the gun were in harmony. So that together they made a death song.

Shooting with Daryl at her side. Seeing and aiming in each other's light, finding each other's rhythm. A dance. A roaring duet.

He had woken something in her. Laid his hand on it. Stroked it into stirring. In the yard, whispering the litany into her ear, he had stoked it into flames.

_I kill with my heart._

There would be no stopping him, no.

Just as there would be no stopping her.

She said none of this to Carol, and if any of it showed on her face Carol gave her no sign. Instead she shrugged. "I guess we'll see what we see, then."

"Mm." Carol was quiet a moment, then gave her a faint, side-long smile. "Well. Stay through tomorrow, at least. Whatever he thinks, he should rest a while longer - and so should you, if it comes to that."

She picked up the basket and started toward the door, but paused and looked back. "And tomorrow is Reaptide. Nothing much, but we'll have a bonfire. Widow Gerna makes wonderful wenberry pies." She gave Beth another smile, a little wider. "Music, even. I know you like to sing."

Beth stared at her. The cold shock making its way through her must not have been visible, because before she could think of anything else to say, Carol was gone.

She stood in the kitchen for a long time. She was looking at everything differently now, _feeling_ everything differently. The quality of the light. The coolness in the air - _crispness,_ not just cool. She had assumed it was simply that they were in the mountains. But weren't the days shorter? The forests all around seemed to be almost entirely pines. Evergreens. There would be no turning leaves to signal it. She had seen no fields; there would be no harvest to bring in as she had on the farm.

She closed her eyes and thought of standing in her bedroom - standing before the window in the night, looking up at the moon. Golden and heavy, bright enough to cast her shadow in hard lines across the floor. She had looked _right at it,_ and hadn't seen.

The Huntress Moon. More, the _late_ Huntress Moon. The Peddler's Moon far behind. The Demon Moon not far ahead.

She had believed they must have been under the mountain for no more than two days. Surely no more than two. She would have been nearly dead by the time they found the door. Daryl would never have survived.

Yet there was no mistake. There couldn't be. Even if Carol had said nothing, the evidence was all around her, plain for her to see.

She and Daryl had been under the mountain, in the dark, for over two months.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's been a little longer in coming. It's strange to post it now, given what's going on with the show. But.
> 
> _There are other worlds than these._

 

 

14

 

Beth didn't tell him.

She considered it. She sat in the kitchen after the last of her folding was done and looked at the fading light, and she thought about it. It would be the sensible thing, even if she couldn't make sense of it. He knew a great deal more about the world than she did; if _she_ couldn't make sense of it, it was possible that he could.

But as she sat in the slightly rickety chair she had pulled up by the table and watched the shadows lengthening, she knew she wasn't going to. Not yet. Why, she wasn't exactly sure; she knew only that the prospect of doing so filled her with the sense that it might set something in motion that she couldn't control. Set yet another wheel turning. There were so many turning already, spinning through her head, and while at times - often - she felt as if she were riding them...

At other times she felt as if they were poised to roll over her. Crush her. Leave her in their path as they turned on and on and cared nothing for her or for anyone else they broke.

She looked down at her hands and thought of the weight and the grip of the gun. She had felt unstoppable, before. She had been certain. She wanted that weight again. She wanted to hear that thunder, to birth it with her own will. She wanted to aim with her eye and shoot with her mind and see something die because her heart willed it so.

But now, when she thought about that, she also saw her father's face.

And in it was a sorrow deeper than she could bear.

So what would it mean to remember the face of her father now? Daryl had told her it was an oath, one of the most serious one could make. But he used it in other ways. In the litany. _Say it, Beth. Say it and be true._ And then there had been the moment when he cried to her to cross the dam, to run, _for your father's sake._

Lying under the stars in the first colorless light of dawn. Giving her the gun. The way he had looked at her then. Looking at her knowing he might die with her by his side, that he likely would, that his last conscious thoughts would be of her.

Looking, if not happy, at least content.

_You did well. You remembered the face of your father._

But did she? Was that had happened? What was happening now? Her father had told Daryl to go. Had clearly _wanted_ him gone. Had known what he was at first sight of him - which stood to reason. He had the books; he might have known the same way Beth did. Of gunslingers. Of Gilead and the Affiliation of baronies and the world of light before the world moved on.

He might have known that way.

But somehow she didn't think so.

"How, Daddy?" she whispered, looking up from her lap and toward the window. It was open, and from outside she could hear the sound of children shrieking at each other and a man calling something she couldn't make out. Another call, a woman this time. Reaptide, tomorrow. They might already be preparing. If it went the way she knew, there would be a stuffy guy to burn. There would be preparations to be made before the following evening. And then would come fire.

Fire.

She shuddered. It came before she knew it would, and as it did she felt thin frustration. She knew she would hurt for a time yet. Probably a long time. But the fear... She could do without the fear. As far as she could tell it served no purpose at all.

Wherever she went, she thought dimly, there would be fire.

"How did you know, Daddy?" She lifted her hands to her hair and pushed it absently back from her cheeks and brow. He braid was coming loose and suddenly she wanted very badly to redo it. " _What_ did you know?"

Yet in the end he told Daryl to take her. To take her away. To save her, surely. But his face...

His face. She would remember his face.

Someday maybe she would be sure of what that meant.

~

The sun was almost fully down when she went out onto the porch and found Daryl there, sitting on the steps and looking moodily out at the town and the night falling over it.

It was like they had come full circle, she thought, standing just behind and watching him. From the farm to this. From one shelter to another. Now as then she was unsure of so many things, and the number of the things of which she was unsure only seemed to be increasing. Now - and it was one thing about which she _was_ certain - they stood on the brink of something. Something to be decided. Another change. Another turn of the wheel.

Before - in the last night of that other life - she sat on the steps with him and talked to him, and he answered her in ways she never expected him to. Saying little, yes, but _speaking,_ and speaking as if he didn't mind her there.

So what would happen when - _when_ \- she sat down with him now?

Maybe they had come full circle. Maybe Ka truly was a wheel. But things had changed. She had been through a hell of darkness with him, and he had gone through it with her. She had fought by his side. _Killed_ by his side. Had learned, in a way she had never known, that she _could_ kill. She had been ready to die. Had faced it and been unafraid. She might still fear many things - only a fool feared nothing at all, and she wasn't a fool - but death was no longer among them.

When she had asked him to take her away from the farm, she had asked her to take him away from her life. She had brought herself into this new one. She hadn't lost who she was before, and who she was now was - in many ways - the girl and the woman she had always been. But this life _was_ new. And it began with him.

So what would come next?

Abruptly he turned and looked over his shoulder at her, and she was mildly surprised to see that he was smoking. But maybe not so surprised, in fact. Hadn't she said he might be able to get tobacco here?

Hadn't they come full circle?

In the faint glow of the cigarette she thought she saw the slight curl of his smile. "You gonna sit, or what?"

She returned the smile - for so it was. "You biddin' me do so, Mister Dixon?"

He looked at her for a moment, inhaling deeply, then released a stream of smoke through his nose and jerked his head, beckoning. "C'mon."

She went to him and settled beside him - close, though not quite touching his arm, his shoulder. It was that same feeling, of reaching some edge. Some new turn of some new wheel. Yet another one. So many, and more all the time.

But when she looked at him all those wheels seemed to still, and it was a little easier to think clearly.

On sudden impulse, she reached out a hand. "Lemme try."

He shot her a quizzical look - then huffed a smoky laugh when he realized what she meant. "You mean to? You're gonna hate it, girl."

"Why're you so sure?" She turned to face him more squarely, and perhaps she put a little more indignation into her voice than was truly there. "How do you know I haven't had a smoke before?"

"Your da' didn't. No one in that house did."

"How do you know I didn't elsewhere? There was Jael."

Another look from him, everything he wasn't saying clear on his face. _C'mon, girl._ "You said _try._ "

She rolled her eyes. So he had caught her. Caught her, and she didn't mind. There was something about this that was easy to fall into. Something warm, comfortable. The Huntress Moon might be rising above the trees, but the night was still mild, and the darkness and the slow mutants and the Man in Black and the wolf-things and even the thinny all seemed distant and hazy. Dreams, only. This was far more real.

"You gonna let me, or not?"

She half expected him to refuse, but without much in the way of hesitation he plucked the cigarette from between his lips and handed it over. She took it and lifted it to her mouth, inhaled deeply...

And promptly launched into a fit of coughing.

"Toldja." She could hear the smile in his voice, and he slapped her on the back. "Easy. Just breathe."

" _Tryin'._ "

"Try harder. Ain't like it's complicated."

She shoved at him, still coughing, and thrust the thing back at him. He took it, raised it to her in a salute and tapped ash onto the ground.

And for a while after that they were quiet, and the quiet was good.

"You're doin' better," Beth said presently. Soft, and as she did she wondered what exactly she was driving at. Why she was moving in this direction. Feeling him out, perhaps. She had been wondering what was next, but the thought of asking him directly felt strange and deeply uncomfortable.

"Mm."

"I mean," she went on, "looks like you can move it pretty good now. Your arm."

"Pretty good," he echoed, and was silent a moment. "But not good as before. I tried."

"It's real soon, still. Maybe you just need more time."

"Maybe." He leaned back slightly, head tilted up to the sky, the moon spilling over his face and somehow both hardening and smoothing its lines. "But it's not gonna be the same. I can tell. No matter how much better it gets."

She was going to ask him how he knew - but immediately decided against it. It was a stupid question. He knew because he knew. And she was sure he wasn't wrong.

"You gonna be alright?" she asked softly, drawing her knees up against her chest. Something else she hadn't meant to ask until it was out, but there it was, and it was only as she said it that she began to feel the depth of its meaning.

There were many ways in which he hadn't been all right. She suspected she only knew a few of them. There were many ways in which he might not be all right now.

He didn't answer, and as the minutes slipped by she was ready to let it go. But he blew another stream of smoke at the moon and said, just as softly, "I dunno."

And then other questions rose in her, clamoring to be asked, and she was reminded again of that night on the porch with such visceral force that a wave of dizziness washed over her. _Who are you? Where are you_ really _going? Why did you have me shoot the gun? Why did you teach me the litany? Who is Rick, and why are you the way you are with him? What happened under the mountain? What's going to happen now?_

_When you look at me, what do you see?_

They rushed over each other, crowded and jostled behind her lips, and she hugged her knees tighter against herself. But before she could work up the courage and the coherence to ask any of them, Daryl began to speak again.

"You know the story of Apon and Lydia?"

She started slightly, shaken out of the odd tension that had gripped her. "I..."

He glanced at her - a glance which lingered. It was difficult to read his face in the moonlight. He nodded at the sky. "Might know 'em as Old Star. Old Mother."

The names were familiar. Cradle stories? She remembered so many - had told them to him when he was making his long, slow way back to her - but this wasn't one of them. "No, I... I don't think so."

And even if she might be able to remember it, it came to her that she wanted him to tell it. He had told her other stories, many stories by now, and she wanted to hear his voice slip into that subtly different tone, a different rhythm. Even the way he formed his words changed, though it was difficult to mark unless she listened closely.

"Apon and Lydia were married," he said. "Deep in love. The kind of love that gets stories told about it." Again that little hint of a smile, clearer in the combined light of the moon and the last of the cigarette, and Beth felt something warm drift gently through her. "'cept one day they quarreled. Lydia caught Apon spendin' a bit too much time with this other woman, Cassiopeia. Quarrel became a fight, fight became somethin' fearful. Tore up half the heavens. Broke cups, dishes, throwin' 'em at each other. One of the broken pieces became the Earth. Another one became the moon. Stray coal from their fire, that became the sun. Finally the gods got so afraid they might destroy everythin', they set 'em in opposite ends of the sky. North and south. And of course they're still up there now, still far from each other as they can be. But the story goes that they don't wanna be. They'd both like to make up. Be together again. But their pride won't let 'em."

Beth listened in silence. At some point, without meaning to, her head tipped over to rest against his shoulder. He didn't shrug her away.

"What happened to Cassiopeia?"

Daryl tossed the cigarette into the dirt, stretched out his leg and ground it out with the heel of his boot. "She's up there too. Gods punished her, trapped her there. She's got a chair made of stars." He breathed a laugh, almost too quiet to be heard. "Don't sound so bad, huh?"

"No."

Again, quiet fell over them. The town itself was quiet, people heading indoors. Settling. Some perhaps making their way toward an early bed. Beth took a slow breath and shifted a little closer to Daryl. It was strange that it would feel so odd now, given how close they had been beneath the mountain and after, but so it was.

It was, again, like that first night. Maybe she had wanted to be closer to him then and hadn't even known it.

"What happens if they ever do make up?"

Daryl didn't answer for a long moment, but Beth could feel him thinking. She felt it with the rhythm of his breathing, the faint thump of his heart. At last he shook his head.

"Dunno. Maybe..." He sighed. "Maybe the world ends."

"Ain't the world already endin'?"

"'s movin' on. Ain't the same thing."

"Isn't it, though? In the end?" He said nothing, and after a few seconds she pressed on. "I mean, if it's gonna, I'd like it to be because two people finally got over their pride enough to be in love again. Wouldn't you?"

"Everything's gotta end sometime."

He didn't speak again, but she could feel him looking at her, and she raised her head. He was, his face half-lit, the moonlight sharpening his cheekbones and the ridge of his brow.

"We were down there two months."

She hissed in a sharp breath. Of course. She had been a fool after all; of _course_ he would have known. He would have seen. He might have known almost immediately. Known... and not told _her._

Why?

She pushed the thought away. There were others more immediately pressing. "Do you understand it? How? How... it could be?"

Slowly he shook his head. "There's a lot I don't understand these days."

She bit her lower lip. She had hoped, she realized. Had hoped at least that he might be able to give her some kind of answer. Had hoped he might know. Even if she believed he knew but simply wasn't telling her... But he wasn't lying. He was a poor liar. He _didn't_ know.

He didn't understand.

"So what happens now?" _With all that lost time?_ "We gonna move on? When you feel strong enough?"

He looked away from her and back at the sky. His hands were loose between his knees, and as her gaze moved over him - no effort to hide it - she lingered at the place where she knew the wound was, wrapped up under his shirt. Healing, yes. But she had seen his scars.

Some wounds never really healed.

"I dunno. I was thinkin'..." He glanced at her again. "I was thinkin' maybe we stick around here for a while."

She stared at him. She had expected something besides a _yes,_ but that...

Was she really so surprised, though?

"Thought you had to find your brother."

"I been lookin' for him for twenty years." He had turned his face away from her again, and she noticed that his hands were moving slowly, fingers rubbing against each other as if he itched to grab something and hold on. "Twenty years. Ain't found him. I just..." He sighed. "Maybe it's time to stop lookin".

She hadn't moved away from him. If anything she had moved closer. But she tilted her head, trying to see his face more clearly, and she felt the sudden urge to reach out and touch his jaw, turn him back toward her. "Twenty years... It was the most important thing to you. Had to be, if you've been doin' it that long. Now you're gonna stop?" She let out a soft breath of a laugh. "What changed your mind?"

He did look at her, then. Looked at her for a long moment. She could see his eyes, and though she could have sworn no moonlight touched them directly, they were clear. Bright.

Then he shrugged and looked down at his hands.

"Tell me," she prodded, and reached down, curled her own hand around one of his and held on. Here was the edge, and now that she was right up against it she didn't want to back away. "What changed your mind?"

He raised his head. He didn't try to pull his hand away, didn't move away from her at all. Instead, slow, he lifted his free hand and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. And his fingers lingered there, traveled to her jaw, her cheek, and rested warm and rough against her skin.

And in his eyes she saw everything she needed to know.

"Oh."

She had never before kissed anyone. Never been kissed by another. But when his mouth closed over hers and her lips parted against him, it was easy. It was the simplest thing. Sweet and soft, the smell of smoke still lingering around him and reminding her of all their campfires, all their nights together before this one - and the first. The very first.

Everything that had come in that night, and everything she had lost.

She made a quiet sound, her hand finding the side of his neck, and when he slid his fingers into her hair it was a little less soft, though no less sweet, and she pressed in close and took his face in her hands and lost herself in it.

It was easy, yes.

It was _familiar._

Behind her closed eyelids, faint and distant but rising into the dark, burned a great fire.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so there's this character I thought we might meet at some point in this thing and instead he was all HI I'M GONNA SHOW UP AND BE A DICK NOW, HOPE THAT'S OKAY and I couldn't really say no to him because he's not the kind of guy you say no to, so that happened. 
> 
> Last breath of calm before all hell truly breaks loose.

 

 

 

15

 

Two months.

Daryl was glad she hadn't pushed. Glad she had taken his answer. It had possessed the considerable benefit of being true - and that in itself bothered him deeply. Twenty years on the move, and he had seen many strange things - indeed, he had seen time warp and twist like cloth rippled by wind. He had seen what thinnies could do. Nearby plants growing from seeds, tall, withering and dying in a matter of hours. He had seen the shadows within the lightest wisps of those swirling mists shifting and lengthening far more rapidly than the movement of the sun could account for. Once he had seen a man pulled in, and he hadn't been devoured as others had been - had managed to escape it - but had emerged not older but _younger_ by nearly ten years.

The world was moving on, but he had learned early that it wasn't always moving on in a singular direction.

Even that was breaking down.

But even this had been nothing like that, and he wasn't sure the proximity of the thinny could account for it. Two months gone. He remembered very little of the dark, and the passage of time had been strange - strange in ways that now made a kind of horrible sense. Minutes, hours, days, weeks - they bled into each other. Had become indistinguishable. He had initially believed no more than a couple of days at most... Until they had emerged and he had really _seen_ what was around them.

Seen the moon.

Whatever lay under the mountain, he had seen enough in two decades of wandering the course of literally thousands of miles to know that the lightless depths contained more than mere ruins. The Old Ones, whose bizarre leavings could still be found centuries upon centuries after their makers' disappearance, hadn't only built wonders. Hadn't only constructed monoliths and tombs.

Daryl knew magic. Was on intimate terms with it. The Great Old Ones had possessed the use of something else entirely.

Normally he would have given the whole matter some careful consideration. But then, with Beth, he had wanted to set it aside.

Set it aside for what, if he was honest, was betrayal. Of so many things. Desperate. He should be ashamed of it, of what it meant.

But he looked at her now, her face soft in the dawn light, and he felt no shame at all.

They had stayed awake late into the night, on the porch and then in his bed - for it was a little bigger than hers - talking of nothing much, touching a little, now and then kissing again, and that part was slow and easy and then sometimes a little less of both. Then shifting away from each other, gathering back into themselves. Without speaking about it, there had come an agreement not to move quickly. He was aware of some things, sure of things he had only considered in a general sense. He wanted her - he wanted her like he had never wanted a woman, and in truth for much of his life he hadn't wanted _anyone_ in particular, at least not to take them to bed. Not to lie with them. To _fuck_ them, he thought, because the word applied, though something about it was strange when he attached it to her.

Because that wasn't all he wanted. It wasn't even the first thing. Yes, it was there, and warmer and closer to the surface than it had ever been, lying here with her pressed along his side and her head pillowed on his shoulder, her breathing deep and even. It was there and it was smoldering in him, and might yet burn.

But it wasn't all.

Because somewhere between the farm and this, he now understood, he had fallen in love with her.

More than that. _Falling in love_ conjured up fairy stories, ballads, great romances that were nevertheless simple and without much depth. But this...

_Running with her. Running through the trees, the grass. Falling with her, staring at the sky. Sitting with her in the ruins of a house, enraged in a way that was raw and horribly naked. Watching her play, sing, wondering what he was going to do._

_And then something happened. The worst thing. He couldn't reach it when he felt these things. Couldn't touch it._

There were the guns. There was the path of the Beam. There was Rick and Michonne, and the road he knew they walked. There was his brother, who might not even be alive but who he nevertheless knew was so. And there was the Tower. All of these things pulling at him at once. Tearing at him. When he found Beth he knew she was a trap, he knew she was disaster, yet he had taken her with him, kept her close, and now he didn't want to escape her, and in her he perceived that his own escape might be possible, and it might also be possible to save _her_.

Because he understood now that the trap of the Man in Black had been double-sided. Janus-faced. She might threaten his destruction. But he had threatened the same the moment he allowed her to take his gun in her hand.

_We are each other's dan-tete. Together we burn._

But if they stayed. Held onto each other and stayed. Turned away from all the paths he had followed, all the paths that tempted him, and all the paths he might now have set her on. Turned away from each one and laid the foundation for a kind of life in this small, strange place.

It might be possible. It might be. Terrible hope had gripped him the instant he considered it. Madness - sheer insanity to stand against Ka. But twenty years of wandering beneath a endless cycle of moons - Kissing, Peddler, Huntress, and Demon - might drive anyone mad.

He looked down at her and stroked a hand slowly through her hair. A girl who was not a girl. So much younger than him, yet she wasn't young at all.

He knew her very well.

Today was Reaptide. The turning of the year. At Hershel's distant farm there would be no gathering-in of the grain, no bonfire or feast, if he had indeed ever allowed such a pagan custom in a household he had claimed for the Man Jesus. From here on, darkness would fall over the land until the wheel of the seasons turned the world back toward the light.

_It might be possible. It might be done._

He turned his head and pressed his lips to her brow. There was no one for him to pray to. He wished so much that there was.

_Bird and bear and hare and fish._

_Give my love her fondest wish._

What was that wish, then? What was he hoping might be hers?

Suddenly he was afraid.

He held her closer and closed his eyes. Outside the window, the world spun on through the dawn.

~

The rose.

She held it in her hand. She had picked it, and for a single instant this fact filled her with terror, for might it not now die? Would it wither, its petals drop to the ground, the suns which burned in its heart go dark one by one? What then of the worlds that circled those suns?

One girl only, one girl and one hand and one will, yet she might possess this kind of power. In the right place, at the right time, it might be hers.

She had been here before, she realized. Had been here, right here, standing in this trackless field of roses with a burning sky turning overhead. She had left all the shambling dead behind her, all the screaming and all the gunfire, the running that never, ever stopped. She had passed through some forgotten door and left it all behind.

And that was no mercy.

As she stood there, the rose in her hand, it came to her that she wasn't alone. She looked away from its brilliant heart, to her left, and she saw Rick and and Michonne standing there, Rick with his guns drawn and a look on his face of mingled horror and rage and terrible, mad joy. Michonne close beside him, her sword raised and ready to strike, but there was no joy on her face. Only the coldness of a woman who knows she is about to die.

To her right. She already knew what she would see.

Daryl. His crossbow raised and leveled. No joy on his face, either. No joy in his eyes. If Michonne's face was cold, his was craggy stone... and hate.

She looked away from him, fear gripping her heart, and saw what it was that had earned all his hatred.

The Tower.

The Dark Tower.

It rose before them, seeming both very near and some unmeasurable distance away. The bloody clouds spiraled around it, meeting at its pinnacle - so high that it was nearly impossible to make out. From here she could see that it wasn't black at all; it was a horrifying all-color that managed to be no-color. It was like the universe made into a solid spike, and also like the manifestation of a void beyond comprehension. It was terrible, beyond terrible, awful in every sense of the word, and as Beth stared at it she felt her mind beginning to unhinge.

 _Daryl,_ she whispered, and fumbled for his hand, but it wasn't there.

 _Here all things meet. All paths and all Beams._ His voice in her ear, the delicate nobility of the High Speech. _Heart of my heart, you stand before the hub of the Wheel of Ka._

 _But-_ She turned, needing him, needing his hand or the strength of his arms, or to press her head to his chest and hear the beating of his heart, but he wasn't there. His bow had fallen into the roses, and as she bent, her throat clenched into a fist, she saw that both it and the roses onto which it had dropped were spattered with blood.

A great quantity of blood.

Rick. Michonne. She whirled, but they were also gone. Rick's guns and Michonne's sword, lying among the roses like the debris of a sunken ship in a sea of blood. They gleamed in the light of the dead sky, gleamed in the light of suns which even now were beginning to swell and darken like tumors, to decay.

Stricken, tears streaming down her cheeks, she turned back to the Tower, and as she did so she realized that the rose she had been holding was gone, and Daryl's guns were in her hands.

Both of them.

She stared at them. When the sight of them was no longer bearable she raised her head-

And a man stood before her.

_Walter._

Yet it was not Walter o'Dim, or at least it wasn't him as she had seen him. This man wasn't cloaked at all, but was instead dressed in a pair of dusty jeans and a rough shirt of the kind both Rick and Daryl wore, sturdily made and suitable for heavy labor or long travel. He wore a simple hooded coat over this, and beneath that, over the shirt...

A leather vest.

She didn't have to see it closely to know whose it was. To know it very well.

Her eyes lifted to the man's face. He wore a smile, wide and cheery, his cheeks blooming nearly as red as the roses. His brilliantly blue eyes twinkled. His teeth were very white. She had not seen Walter's face clearly, but she had seen enough to recognize it when she saw it again. That smile. This one.

Yet not. Not quite.

"Hey, Beth," he said, his voice warm and pleased, and she found - to her horror - that it was an _appealing_ voice. Attractive. She could imagine herself being drawn in by it, held by it, and by the crystalline quality of his eyes. "Heya, _Bethy_." As freezing anger stabbed through her, the man threw his head back and tittered - an ugly sound, all the seductive power of his voice vanishing.

Then it was gone, and when he lowered his head and looked at her there was no smile. No cheerfulness. "Hile, gunslinger."

 _I'm not-_ she started, but he raised a hand and cut her off, and she didn't know if she had been thinking or speaking aloud.

"You know what you are. Don't be like _him_. Don't be like that stupid fucking redneck of yours who refuses to see what's right in front of him. _Master_ of self-deception, that one. It's really pretty fuckin' incredible. He's hidden more things from himself than most people ever know."

Beth was afraid. She knew it, felt the full force of it. Yet she drew herself up, held the guns in a solid grip, and knew she could shoot if she had to.

_The face of my father._

"Who are you? Walter?"

"Walter," the man echoed, and now he sounded musing. "That name... No, I won't claim it now. Not here." He jerked his head back toward the tower, a ghost of that smile once again pulling at the corner of his mouth. "Not with _him_ so close."

"Who, then?"

"Well, ain't you a pert li'l thang." A drawl crept into his voice, something like a cross between Daryl and Rick's accents while being nothing like either. "I go by many handles, girl. I walk many paths and I've been called many things. Walter, yes, they've called me that one. I've also been known as the Ageless Stranger, the Walkin' Dude, and once I was even called Maerlyn, though that one... I wouldn't necessarily bank on that one, tell ya true. But for this, for you..." His brow furrowed as he appeared to consider something. "You, Bethy, may and would do well to call me Robert Finn. Yes, I think that would do well enough."

Something about it. About the last name. It pulled at her, scraped at her like claws. Something Daryl had said, in the dark and then in the light when he was lost in his delusions. A name, spoken in utter terror. Spoken with the terror he had reserved for only one other.

_The Crimson King._

But this man's name...

_Flagg._

All at once both guns were raised and she had thumbed the hammers back. If she shot now, she knew she would put two bullets in him without thought or effort - one in his head, one in his heart, and to do so would be a pleasure.

"What the hell do you want?"

Her voice, but not her own. Older

Far more rough. Far more weary.

"To talk." He sighed and shook his head. "Put down those guns, Bethy. All they'd be to me is an annoyance."

Beth clenched her jaw. The guns moved not one iota. "Don't you call me that."

"You're not in a position to stop me. What, you don't appreciate the reminder of _Daddy?_ You saw Daddy burn, didn't you? But that's not all that happened to him. Don't you remember? Daddy's head rolling in the grass? That was the beginning of a lot of things, wasn't it? The end for Hershel, though, thanks to my good friend Phil. A world of ends, Bethy, worlds upon worlds, and in every single one of them your daddy dies, and his death is what throws you and your _redneck asshole_ together. Is it worth it?" Finn cocked his head. "To be with him? Honestly, I'm curious."

"Tell me what you want or we'll see just how much of an _annoyance_ these things are."

"I told you, girl. Gunslinger. To talk." Finn moved toward and then alongside her, stopping at the crossbow. Beth turned, following him with the guns, and when he stopped and she saw what he was looking down at her heart twisted in her chest.

_Don't you touch it. Don't you touch it, you-_

Of course he did. He bent and lifted it into his hands, and Beth saw immediately that he knew how to use it. He held it with the same ease and confidence Daryl always had.

"Not quite as elegant as the guns, is it? But it's effective, I suppose. And he loves the precision. This is another constant, do you know that? Across every world, he has this thing. Eschews every other weapon for it. He has his knife, of course, and he does love that thing too - did you know you give him one? In one of those worlds? For his birthday. I wish you could see his face. Then you kiss him, and he's just..." Finn sighed happily. "It's like a damn romance novel."

Beth watched him, silent. There was no point in asking him again what he wanted. Clearly he was doing it. Talking. Clearly he _loved_ to talk. And she didn't really imagine she would be able to shut him up.

And what he was saying...

Finn lowered the bow, set it down, and once again jerked his head back toward the Tower. "You know what that is."

Beth almost shook her head - then did not. Because didn't she? Daryl hadn't spoken of it except in hints, and even then only in passing, but she knew. She knew very well.

This, too, was a constant. In all the worlds. Because it _was_ all the worlds. "It's what his father wanted him to find."

Finn nodded, serious again. "More than that, Bethy. This is his birthright. All his, and he walked the fuck away from it."

Beth's arms were beginning to tire. She was strong, but the guns were heavy, and her muscles were beginning to tremble. Maybe he could see. Maybe she didn't care. "So?"

"So don't you wonder about a man who would walk away from a genuine chance to save _everything?_ " Finn let that hang in the air for a moment, studying her face, then half turned and gestured toward the Tower with a little flourish, like a man unveiling some marvelous thing. "All the world _moving on?_ Do you wonder why that is? Have you ever had a feeling, somewhere deep down inside you, that something somewhere was _wrong_ somehow? That something was broken? Or breaking? Some mechanism winding down, bit by bit? Going slower and slower, girl, while everything moves faster and faster."

Beth didn't answer. But she was thinking of the thinny. Before Daryl had taken her hands, before she had tumbled through that hole in the world and caught a glimpse of that heap of broken images. Maybe she had forgotten it before, but now with the clarity of a vision remembered within a dream, it all came back to her.

A rose. A rose just like these roses, a single one instead of one within a field of them. Heartbreakingly, _mind_ breakingly lovely. But in such terrible danger.

In such danger, and she hadn't understood _why._

And then...

"That world," Finn said softly. "You saw it. The dead, rising. Walking. It's not just your world moving on, Beth. It's all of them. Every single one. Some faster, some slower. That one... That one is moving on very quickly indeed. That one is the nearest to you, the most neighborly, but there are others. Countless others. And your man? Your _redneck asshole?_ Your _nobody_ and your _nothing?_ He walked away from a chance to save them _all."_

Finn smiled. It was not cheerful. It was the smile of a wolf about to sink its teeth into the spine of an exhausted deer. "Every second of every day, he walks away. And why do you think he hasn't told you about this? Why do you think he's keeping it from you, little gunslinger?

"Why do you think he's trying to get you to stay with him now?"

That seductive voice. So trustworthy. She could tell it would be easy to believe, and though she didn't trust this man, didn't trust him at all - hated him, in fact, hated him as violently as she had ever hated anything or anything, hated him with a force that didn't even seem to originate within her - his words were nestling into her. Burrowing their way in through her ears. She thought of squirming maggots and fought back a shudder.

He was lying. He was...

Was he?

Did anything he said fit poorly with anything she knew? Anything Daryl himself had told her?

"He's a coward, Beth," Finn murmured. He was fading now, the outlines of his powerful body becoming indistinct. Through his head she could see the spike of the Tower. "He's a coward, and he'll make you a coward too. Make you a coward in his arms. In his bed. For _love._ "

_For love._

Beth looked through him, and slowly she lowered Daryl's guns. She could still see Finn, but he was like a column of smoke, and even as she watched a gust of wind shook the roses and seemed to sweep him away. It was only her and the Tower, and a soft, almost inaudible sound which she couldn't immediately identify.

Then it swelled, just for a moment, and she knew it was a song. She could barely hear it, but she remembered - again - the thinny, and what she had seen there. What she had heard. The song of the rose. Now here were thousands of them, perhaps millions - _no, not perhaps, there_ are _millions_ \- and they all sang, each one in perfect harmony with every single other.

But hardly there. Too quiet.

Because she was not truly here either. She knew it, all at once and with absolute certainty. She was no more solid, no more _real,_ than Finn had been when he vanished quite literally into thin air.

When Rick and Michonne had vanished.

When Daryl had.

She holstered the guns and moved forward, dropping to one knee and picking up the bow. She felt its weight, felt the power hiding in its limb and its string. Unconsciously she cradled it, and she thought back to what Finn had said. About all the many worlds. Worlds in the heart of countless roses. In each, her. In each, him. And in each, this. His weapon. Not his guns.

And she understood then that the guns were not truly his.

They were on _her_ hips.

She closed her eyes, and for a strange moment she forgot the Tower entirely. It was there, monstrous and monstrously alluring, but she only felt the bow in her arms, and she thought of a forest, a cool day in early summer, the ground soft underfoot and the track clear before her eyes, and his solid, warm presence behind her.

_You're the one wanted to learn._

Teaching her. So close to her, teaching her, and she had felt his gaze on her and hadn't known what to make of it. But she had liked it. Had wanted to show him that she could do it.

In all the worlds, this bow.

This bow, spattered now with blood.

"Daryl," she whispered, and raised her head.

And the Tower was closer.

She shook her head and held the bow tighter. Not this. No. Not what waited for her there - because she could see it now, distant but clear, wrapped in scarlet that whipped raggedly in a howling wind, crouched on a high balcony and gazing down at her with its enormous dead eyes.

_Deadlights._

She clutched the bow to her chest and said his name again, but he was gone. Rick was gone, Michonne was gone... Carol. Maggie and Shawn and her father and mother... _And Glenn and Carl and Judith and Tyreese and Sasha, Bob, everyone from the prison, everyone sunken into the silent halls of the dead and the rooms of ruin, and now there was a hallway, a hallway, the glitter of tiny blades and a bullet crashing through the air and into_

Beth screamed and fell back, and the bow tumbled from her arms. The Tower was looming before her now, and she could see its steps like ridges on the back of an immense obsidian dragon. The whole world was _roaring_ at her, all the Beams breaking and falling on her, and far above, laughing his ancient and insane laughter as his crimson robes flew around him like many wings...

_They're all dead, little gunslinger. It's just you and me now. And will you come? Will you allow your lover-of-all-worlds to make you a coward like himself? Will you allow the Tower to fall to my will? Or will you come to it as your blood bids you? As your blood sings with the songs of the roses? Will you come to it with the steel of Arthur Eld in your hands? Will you stand against me?_

_Will you remember the face of your father?  
_

_Will you stand and be true?_

Beth did not stand. She curled on her side like a child, the guns and the bow and everything else forgotten with the sheer force of her terror, and she wrapped her arms around her head and screamed and screamed and screamed.

~

Hands on her - firm, very strong, but gentle. She was being shaken, she was in someone's arms - not her own. She was fighting, struggling as if to free herself, but almost immediately she knew she didn't want to free herself from this.

From him.

She dragged in huge breaths, still shaking with shock and panic, but the world was coming back to her and she could see his face - its lines and hard angles, the deeper softness in his hawk's eyes.

He looked worried. More than worried.

"Beth?"

"I'm..." She closed her eyes again, squeezed them shut and willed herself to stop shaking. "I'm alright. I'm sorry, I was..." She was here. She was here and she was real, and so was he, warm and solid against her. "It was a dream."

_Was it?_

"Got that much." She felt him combing her hair back from her face, and for a moment she was sure that when she opened her eyes they would be somewhere else. Not in this little bed in a strange little town but in a white house surrounded by gravestones, wind sighing in the trees, candles burning and the first light of dawn slipping through the cracks in the boards over the windows.

She would open her eyes and look up, and she would see the open lid of a coffin.

She did so. She saw his face. Morning light. She felt the cool of the breeze through the open window and heard the sound of children running and laughing, adults calling to them and to each other. Busy sounds.

_Come. Reap._

"Cry pardon," she said, though she wasn't sure what for, and she barely got the words out before he was sliding his other hand into her hair and tilting her face up to his, his gaze searching.

"Beth," he murmured.

_Maybe we stick around here for a while._

She didn't know why. She wouldn't ever know why - or at least, not for a long time. Not for worlds of it. She pushed herself against him, pushed upward, kissed him with a fierceness that surprised her. It wasn't just about this room, about this day, or about everything that had gone before.

It was about a world moving on far too quickly.

He made a quiet sound, and his hand shifted to the back of her head, holding her closer as he pressed her lips apart, and she sighed. She wanted this. This. Not that bloody crossbow, not that field of roses, not that Tower and not that crimson-cloaked monster that waited for her there. She didn't want that hallway. She didn't want any of it. All that horror, all that pain... She could hide from it in this.

They could hide together.

But.

_Will you allow your lover-of-all-worlds to make you a coward like himself?_

_Or will you stand and be true?_

She sank into the kiss and took it like it was a victory. She had fought for this much. She had won it. It was hers.

_If that's what this is, if this is becoming a coward..._

_Yes. Yes, I will._

But in the palm of her hand, very light, she felt the prick of a rose's thorn.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter of part 2.
> 
> I should note at this point - and perhaps should have done so earlier - that it might be helpful to some readers to consult [this](http://stephenking.com/darktower/glossary.html) whenever I throw in a word of the High Speech whose meaning is not clear from context. Though I do try to do that. It's also just kind of a neat resource, King did some cool worldbuilding there. 
> 
> In particular I should also note that the root word _char_ means _death._ This is Relevant.
> 
> Onward.

 

 

16

 

Now I will tell you a story about Reaptide.

You may know of Reaptide as a time of bonfires and feasting, dancing, singing and good cheer. No doubt you've seen the stuffy-guys burning in the town squares, and lanterns and streamers and ribbons decorating poles and pavilions, or you've taken part in the pumpkin-carvings or the turkey runs. No doubt you've watched Reap-Night fireworks, and surely you've witnessed the great riddling competitions - or even taken part yourself. No doubt you've seen the Reap Charms affixed to the clothing of your friends and neighbors and family - or, if you have seen and done none of these things, you have at least heard about them.

You may have heard whispers of the Reaptide Festival's darker origins.

Perhaps you have even seen the last vestiges of those origins with your own eyes.

Perhaps you can imagine, then, the stench of burning meat that always comes when the meat itself does not desire to burn. The reek of smoldering hair. The sound of bubbling fat. Perhaps you can imagine the screams of protest, the cries for mercy, and the infernal good cheer of the watching crowd. Perhaps you can imagine the strange light of Ghostwood as the flames consume it. Perhaps, when I tell you this, you will imagine the rising of the _can-char_ \- the death gods - with their dead-lit eyes and their ever-weaving spider legs. You will imagine them ascendent in a sky hidden from all human sight, the sky-beyond-the-sky, as the smoke of agony and fear and loneliness and madness rises to them - for they find such offerings most pleasing.

At best they reward those who make such offerings with their indifference.

At worst, they bestow - on those who make the offerings - their many gifts.

The Demon Moon rises.

_Come to the Charyou-tree._

Come.

Reap.

~

Sunset came early to Golan, and not just because of the turning of the seasons. The high walls of the gorge in which the town lay gave the sun only a few hours of direct shining in its passage across the sky, and as soon as it passed out of line of sight and the shadows lengthened, people began lighting paper lanterns, bringing baskets of corn and freshly baked bread, pies and pumpkins. Several tables had been brought out and crowded together in the middle of the street near the stuffy-guy, and before long they were laid with food - none of it rich, none of it unusual, but more than enough of it and all of it pleasing in sight and smell.

Daryl stood in front of the house, one hand curled around the shoulder strap of his bow, and watched it all in silence.

A step at his side. He turned his head, thinking for an instant it must be Beth - who had been napping in her room - but the step was somehow both softer and heavier than Beth's, and before he saw, he knew it was Carol.

She gave him a faint smile, then turned her attention back to the festivities in the street. The few children of the town were running with pumpkins, carrying them to be carved and opened for candles to be set inside them. One man had a fiddle that wasn't particularly well-tuned - nor was he skilled with it - but no one seemed to care. Two older men were stamping their feet and raucously singing a song they both clearly only half remembered.

"They wait all year for it," Carol said softly. "This more than anything else. At first I wasn't sure why. Where I came from it was always first day of Wide Earth. If you remember." She shot him a glance that wasn't entirely easy to read, and he didn't make any real effort to do so. "But here... Reaptide."

Daryl grunted. "Know why?"

"Yar. It's the last of the light." She nodded at the sky, at its deepening shades of purple and blue. "Even in the fullest summer this place doesn't get a huge amount of it. You've noticed? Now the dark is coming."

Daryl listened but said nothing in response. It made sense. It made all the sense in the world. People loved those things most fiercely which they were always in need of, always might lose. In the hills of his childhood, to the extent that any of the seasonal festivals were observed at all, it had been Mid-Summer. The midst of the fullness of days, warmth but also a kind of softness in the air which the blasting heat of later summer would destroy.

The closest to gentleness that dry, hard land ever came.

"You're going to stay, aren't you." Before he could say anything, Carol went on. "In that case you might want to consider letting go the bow once in a while."

Daryl looked at her, surprised... But not so surprised as he might have been. He had only known Carol for a short time before fate and circumstance had forced him to leave her, but in that time he had learned her with a sharp clarity and a familiarity that was borne of looking at someone and seeing your own face reflected back to you. It made sense that she would know at least a little of his mind, and that she might pick things up in other ways.

"You really think I would?"

"I guess not." She smiled, still faint and tired and warm. "You wouldn't be you if you did. You'll settle, you'll try to find a place, but you'll be cautious. You won't feel you really fit. Have you ever even tried?"

"Tried what?" But he knew.

"Settling. You wouldn't have, with me." Without seeming to move at all she slid closer to him, pressed her shoulder lightly against his, and something in it reached into him and smoothed out a few of his edges. "Even if he hadn't been there. You might have wanted to. You were tired, I could tell. You might have tried to stay, helped out... I could tell you liked Sophia. But in the end you would've moved on again."

Daryl shrugged, and felt both the crossbow shifting against his back and the pulling of the new flesh and skin over and around his wound. He wasn't going to argue with her, mostly because she was right. He might very well have tried to stay, if she would have let him. Not as her lover - he had never wanted that and he knew she wouldn't have wanted it either, not from him - but as something all the same. A friend, maybe.

Before her, there had been no one he could ever have called a friend. After, there had been no one else.

Until Beth.

"Never had no reason to settle."

"You got one now?" She tipped him another smile, a little less tired and a little more amused, and as two more children ran past them, screaming and laughing, he felt again that he couldn't hide much from her, and not just because he was a poor liar.

But also because he hadn't been trying to lie. He had no interest in hiding this from anyone. He gave her a single nod and looked away.

"Somehow she's not what I would have expected from you." Daryl could only see her face in the periphery of his vision, but he could tell she was studying him, thoughtful. "Then again, maybe... She's a lot more than she looks, isn't she? A whole lot more."

"Yar," he said softly, and nothing more. He didn't know how to say _what_ she was, not even now, and if he dug down into that truth and pulled all of it up, everything light and alive and everything else deeper and harder and darker, it would be too much. He would have to see things he had very firmly decided to put away.

Paths from which he had turned.

_Turn aside, gunslinger, and follow the path set for you. There is still time._

Carol was quiet for a long moment, but he could feel her still gazing at him, working slowly over him, seeing a great deal. He let her look. What she would see, she would see, and surely she would be able to tell he was troubled by something. Whether she would ask what it was...

She touched his hand. "Walk with me."

She led him a little way down the street, past revelers and people gathered around the food, past children carving their pumpkins, and not for the first time it struck him that this was a town out of its time, out of the world. Out of the world that was, before the world moved on. Untouched by bandits or harriers, untouched by disease or poison. Blessed by strange gifts from the thinny. And it was true that in some places whatever decay was dragging itself through the world did not seem to have passed, or had passed quickly and done little damage. He had seen them; little towns like this one, simple and by no means wealthy and even struggling in some small ways, but healthy enough.

In some of these places, the poison in the ground and water and beasts was in fact easing, passing out of them. That wasn't to say these places were safe, that the older world of light was returning there, but the fact remained that not everywhere had been thrown into ruin. Not yet.

But Golan was different. He had felt it from the first. He felt it now.

Carol took him on past the small crowd around the stuffy guy, and standing at its edge Daryl caught sight of Rick, bareheaded but with his hands on his hips, near his guns, and Michonne, her sword at her back. They both turned to look at him as they passed, and Rick gave them a slight nod. But otherwise there was no acknowledgment.

"They're going tomorrow," Carol said presently. "They tried to get you to go with them, didn't they? Or Rick did."

Daryl shot her a look. This much did surprise him. "How'd you know?"

Carol shrugged. "You have guns. He has guns. Stands to reason he'd at least take an interest." She paused, and again he could feel her thinking. "And he's after something. He won't say what, but I might place a guess. You hear stories. Even those of us who've forgotten much of the world that was... We still have stories."

 _Stories._ "That's how she knew. Beth. Her da' had books."

"Really?" Carol arched a brow. "Is that how?"

He said nothing. They were approaching the bank of the little river. The fire and the lanterns were behind them now, receding, and darkness was beginning to gather in earnest.

"But you said no."

"We ain't after the same thing."

"No. And you're staying anyway."

He nodded. The water was a deeper dark and seemed to be rushing faster and higher than he had yet seen, though there had been no rain to speak of, and it was likely his imagination. Rain would come; from the west it would come, sweeping across the plains and the mountains, heavy and pounding. Or it would if these mountains lay close enough to the plains that always took the brunt of the late autumn storms.

He was no longer sure where anything lay in relation to anything else. Space was strange. As strange as time.

Carol stopped just before the bank became rocky and stepped a little way away from him, her back to him. Standing like this, straight and slender and somehow elegant, the years were swept away from her, and Daryl could imagine her as a girl, young as Beth, perhaps still able to believe in things as fleeting and ethereal as light and love.

Yet here he was. He was no longer sure of his own age; he knew he should be thirty-eight or thirty-nine, but he wondered, and any counting of years he did seemed intensely unreliable. Regardless, it had been many and many since he was a boy, and he had ceased to be a boy far too early. He should have abandoned _light_ and _love_ further behind him than memory could reach.

But he stood here in the dark with the lights of Reaptide at his back, and love was still a thing in which he could believe.

"You won't stop carrying the bow," Carol said.

She didn't turn, and her voice was unreadable. It seemed like a non-sequitur, and for a moment Daryl wasn't sure he had even heard her right. Then he remembered what she had said earlier, and he thought he understood. A little.

"You said I wouldn't."

"No. They'd prefer it. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe you shouldn't. If you stay." She tilted her head back as if she spied something high in the trees on the slope across the river. Daryl followed her gaze and saw the moon rising, heavy and full.

And a deep, angry orange.

_So soon._

"Which means?"

"This place," Carol said softly. "You know it shouldn't be what it is. It's a place out of time. Even the ragged thing time's become." She turned to face him then, though his own body threw her face into shadow. "When was the last time you saw a place this healthy? This untroubled?"

"You sayin' it's dangerous?"

"Don't be an idiot. You know it is." She sounded faintly exasperated. "Everywhere's dangerous. This is just danger of a different kind. You think a place made good and gentle by a thinny is ever going to be really _safe?_ With that ruin so close? There's a strangeness here that lets this place be what it is. If you stay, you might make a home. You and Beth. At least for a time. I did. But you..." She sighed and raked a hand through her short hair. Suddenly her shoulders slumped and she looked weary. "I've never let down my guard. Never. If you stay, you should keep the bow. Keep it close."

For a long while Daryl said nothing to this. He could think of nothing to say. None of it was surprising, and in fact as she spoke he was sure she was telling him nothing he didn't already know. He had seen the thinny. The ruin. Gods' sake, he had been _inside_ both of them and had somehow emerged alive. Him and Beth both.

This place was dangerous. But ahead...

He couldn't take her into that. Even if he didn't take that path, even if he kept going the way he had been, sooner or later she would discover the full horror and the terrible inevitability of what he had been taught. Of what he had killed his father for. She would know, and she would take the path he had refused.

And if she did that, he would follow her.

"What about the guns?"

"What about them?"

"You know what they mean." He managed a thin smile. "You told me not to be an idiot."

Carol huffed a laugh. She didn't sound insulted, and he hadn't expected her to. "The way I see it, you get to decide what they mean. They don't have to mean anything at all if you don't want 'em to."

Slowly, Daryl shook his head. "Wish it was that simple."

"I think you probably make things more complicated than they have to be, much of the time."

Again, he shrugged. Yes, maybe. He hadn't ever given the idea much thought, but if it was true it wouldn't particularly surprise him.

"Daryl." Carol moved forward again and touched his shoulder. "Danger or no danger, there are so many other things you could-"

A scream cut through the air and they both jumped. At first Daryl thought it must just be one of the children, expressing their fun with a little more enthusiasm and volume than was strictly necessary. But no. The scream wasn't a happy one.

The scream was terrified.

He whirled just as Carol lifted a hand to her mouth and sucked in a hard breath.

Lights. Moving lights, all down the street. Through the trees. A few rushing in through the narrow mouth of the box gorge. More pouring down the opposite slope. Dancing. Shapes bearing them, moving swiftly. The shapes of men, yes - but also, through the mouth of the gorge, the tall, broad forms of horses. The faint, high sound of unpleasant laughter, a dark kind of glee that set ice to his spine. Through the houses that lined the street, he saw townsfolk running as if trying to escape an oncoming tide.

In the time it took to blink the crossbow was in his hands and he was moving. What this was, what it meant, he didn't know, and he didn't need to. Enough of it was obvious. He didn't think these were slow mutants - they didn't move like mutants - but it was familiar all the same.

Ka is a wheel. Sooner or later it brings you back to the place from which you began.

He had no idea if Carol was behind him or not. He had no idea whether or not he wanted her to be. The hawk was already rising on the thermals, wheeling, ready to strike and deal out its death.

As he approached the street, the cries took form and words emerged.

_Charyou-tree! Charyou-tree! To the Ghostwood, me comrades! Let's have ourselves a proper bonfire!_

Already one of the houses was burning. Flames were eating around the door, the windows, and through one of those last, with terrible clarity, he saw the panicked face of a little girl. Blond. Pretty. She might have been Sophia.

She might have been Beth. Once.

His boots hit the dirt of the street and he raised the bow, aimed without thought at the nearest rearing horse. Its rider was a squat, bald man, his face twisted with scars into a permanent and hideous grin. The horse was gaunt, its tongue lolling like a dog's, and when it turned on Daryl he saw a blind, milky third eye in the center of its patchy forehead.

He put a bolt through that eye and the horse collapsed at once in a loose heap. The man let out a _caw_ of a sound that might have been rage and might have been mad laughter as he was half pinned beneath it. All around was more fire, more running and screaming, waving arms, people falling. He saw it all with distant coolness as he rushed forward and caved in the man's skull with the limb of the bow before the man could rise. An eye rolled loose. Blood and pink brain flecked Daryl's face. He noted all of this as if it mattered only in the most dry sense, and yanked the bolt free of the horse's head, turning to find another target.

He was spoiled for choice.

Some part of him - the more pragmatic part of the hawk, perhaps - was looking for Rick and Michonne. But he couldn't see them in the fire, the wildly moving shadows.

Then he heard the roar of a gun.

 _Come,_ he thought as he started to run toward the sound.

_Reap._

_~_

It might have been fair to say Beth came awake to the sound of the screaming. But in fact she had been awake already, at least on some level. Instinct, if you like. If it please ya. Or perhaps something deeper, something that sang in her blood. Telling her all wasn't well. Wouldn't be well.

She wasn't going to be taken by surprise. Not again.

As before, she was on her feet and pulling on her boots before she was fully cognizant of what she was doing, tying her hair rapidly back before she thought about why she might need to keep it out of her face. More screaming, and not all human; she remembered the screams of the horses from the night the farm burned - those hideous cries that were somehow human- _like_ yet beyond any sound a human might make - and a kind of red haze descended over her perception. A distance. A capacity for hard calculation.

Daryl would have recognized it instantly. He had, after all, named his own version of the thing.

She didn't bother with the window. She could see the flickering light of fire through the curtains, and assumed it was no Reaptide bonfire, no stuffy-guy. She was at the door in the time it took her to draw a breath, on the stairs, moving down them in a kind of carefully controlled tumble.

At the door of the house she paused, taking it all in, noting everything.

Six horses. Perhaps seven. More people on foot; it was impossible to say how many for sure. Twisted faces in the firelight; houses were burning. The invaders bore torches, _bore fire,_ and waved them feverishly. They also carried knives, rusty spiked poles, machetes. They might have been mutants, so distorted were they, but she thought not. No. These were men.

These were men who had forgotten how to be human.

As she watched, one of them hacked his machete into the back of a fleeing woman and she fell, her arms flailing and a look of terrified shock frozen on her face.

Beth charged forward.

It was insane; she knew it even as she did. She had no weapon, and the woman was dead anyway. She would only be killed as well; the man was looking up at her even as he swung the machete down again, practically taking off the woman's left arm. He was grinning toothlessly, and she knew with absolute certainty that next he would pull the blade free and she would be gifted its attention.

But that red haze wouldn't release her. Only it wasn't a haze; it _was_ red, but it was absolute clarity, sharpness, and everything in a kind of cool slow motion. She could see him ready to swing at her. Knew she could evade. He was clumsy, and he wasn't very quick. She was small, nimble. Fast.

He swung. She ducked, dropped, kicked out sharply at his knee and felt something crunch under her bootheel. Her hand slid into warm slickness and she knew without having to look that it was the dead woman's blood.

The man screamed and tottered, dropped, and the machete fell from his loosened fingers. Beth whirled, half on her knees, and lunged for it. But the man whirled at the same time, with surprising speed, and got to it before she did. His face was now contorted with pain as well as gleeful rage, and as he brought the blade up she knew she might not be able to roll out of the way. Not quick enough.

 _Stupid,_ she thought, and she was far more annoyed with herself than afraid. _Stupid. Slow._

The side of the man's head exploded in a pink cloud. He toppled, eye still staring, astonished, from the ruin of his skull.

Beth looked numbly at this for a moment, at the mingling blood in the dirt, then turned, still on her knees. Rick was running toward her, both guns drawn, and as she watched he turned and took a step back, fired twice, and two others who had been hurtling themselves at him fell twitching into the street.

"Beth!" He turned back to her, and she saw that his eyes were both wild and deeply calm. There was a stillness about him like a storm.

She recognized it like looking in a mirror.

"The guns, Beth," he cried over the rising tide of noise. "In the house! Daryl doesn't have them! Get the _guns,_ for your father's sake!"

For a second - a second that stretched out and out into something like panic but which was not panic at all - she didn't move. Then, as Rick spun and felled another tearing, howling figure - a woman with patchy, stringy hair - she scrambled to her feet and took off back toward the house. The guns, yes. The guns. She needed them.

She _wanted_ them.

~

Daryl didn't know how many people he had killed. He hadn't been counting them, but he had been counting bolts, and while he hadn't yet lost any, he thought he had shot eight or nine times. Not an instant kill with every shot, and the limb of his bow was spattered with blood, along with his hands and his face, from where beatings had taken the place of bolts. He tasted blood on his lips. The firelight all around him was a blur.

Appropriately, the stuffy-guy was now burning. Two people capered around it, waving their torches and laughing madly, their eyes protruded and rolling. They looked like dogs.

He shot one in the heart and they - it was impossible to tell whether they were a man or a woman and it didn't matter - tipped over on their face with a loud _yawp._ Somehow, over the cacophony of screams and cries, he heard the bolt snap beneath them. He swore. In the last few days he had taken a little time to make more, but it was bad to lose even one.

The other came at him, a wide-eyed animal scramble, all abnormally large teeth and lips pulled back into something between a snarl and a grin. A bolt into the throat, a quick jet of blood. He reached them just as they started to fall, planted a boot in their middle and shoved them backward just as he seized the bolt and yanked it free.

All right. He was managing. He was aware of a horrible burning pain in his shoulder and arm and wondered vaguely if he had torn the wound open, but it was of no consequence.

He stepped over an old man sprawled in the dirt. His neck had been hacked into with such force that his head had nearly been cut off. His eyes were open and staring. Daryl could see the blood-smeared pale of his spine.

He moved on, reloaded, and looked for Rick and Michonne. Carol. Where was Carol? Where the _fuck_ was Carol?

_Beth._

_Please, gods, let her stay where she is._

But he knew it would not be so.

~

By the time Beth made it back down the stairs and off the porch, she could no longer see Rick at all. But she saw Michonne only a few yards away, saw her cleave a man nearly in two with her sword, turn and take the head off another with three hard swings. She was blood-soaked, her hair flying and her body spinning like a dancer's, and for a few seconds Beth froze, enthralled by the terrible beauty of her.

She might not bear guns as Rick did. But she was a gunslinger all the same.

Then Beth was moving again, the guns a wonderful weight at her hips. Both. She didn't think she could lift and aim as she had to with one hand each, but she wore both all the same, belts crossed low on her waist, because she must. She knew.

She _was._

She unholstered one as a horse charged toward her. Michonne whirled, raised her sword and began to lunge at it, but Beth lifted and aimed and cocked, and she aimed true. The gun roared and the horse screamed and crumpled, its rider hurled practically over its head. He landed on his own head and it snapped sideways, and he lay still like a thrown sack of grain.

Cold satisfaction. She could feel Michonne staring and paid no heed. She strode forward, smoke thick in her nose, and looked for her next target.

_I kill with my heart._

~

Daryl found Rick on the other side of the bonfire and rushed to him. Rick turned at the same time; somehow they had found a pocket of calm, and Rick was reloading with the same kind of casual absent-mindedness that had been drilled into Daryl with curses and blows and endless, relentless hours.

"Y'alright?"

Daryl nodded. He wasn't sure if he was, but it was the only useful answer. He could kill. That was the only thing of any importance.

"Michonne headed back toward the main house. Last I saw she was holding her own." Rick grinned, hard and grim. "She always does."

"Beth. You seen her?" _Gods, please..._ But of course he already knew what the answer would be, and Rick nodded.

"Sent her back for the guns." Daryl wasn't sure what his face was doing, what expression he wore, but whatever it was, it made Rick shift closer to him, that terrible grin still stretching his mouth. "Daryl, you know what she is. You know you can't stop this. She can fight. We _need_ her."

He couldn't argue. Wasn't sure he even wanted to. He had tried to stand in the way of Ka's wheel, had tried to brace himself against it, and now it was rolling over them all, crushing them in its path. He had been stupid. Perhaps it was even greater stupidity, perhaps it was merely inflated self-importance, but Daryl couldn't escape the certainty that they were all paying for it now.

"What about Carol?"

Rick shook his head. "Haven't seen her."

Nothing to be done about that either. Nothing to be done but this. Daryl turned, his back to Rick, felt Rick turn in the same fashion, and they stood together and shot and bodies fell...

And it felt right.

It felt far too right.

~

Beth found Michonne again in the melee and for the briefest of moments they were able to stand, face each other, cry above the din.

"Daryl?"

Michonne jerked her head toward the bonfire. "With Rick. Last I saw he was well. Well enough, anyway."

There was a harsh cry. Beth spun around, Michonne with her, all instinct, and as Beth shot the oncoming rider in the head, Michonne swept her body gracefully forward, turned aside, cut the legs of the horse out from under it. Both fell, blood and fire, and for a few seconds both women regarded each other with something near a smile.

An awful smile.

"Let's find them, then."

But as they pushed through the crowd it was clear there was nothing to smile about.

More were flooding down the slopes. Not mounted on horseback, but even on foot there were too many. The street was littered with dead - the attackers, yes, but also men and women, children. The town had not been large, and as they hurried toward the fire, picking their way over corpses, Beth looked down with a kind of cold, numb rage. They hadn't come to pillage. They hadn't come to raid. They had come only to kill. As before. Always. This was what the world had become, now that it had moved on - as she had heard, been told, but now she saw.

The world was sick. Sick, when it threw up things like this.

Now she saw Daryl and Rick, standing back to back, bow and guns raised. They were surrounded, crowded in, and Beth aimed and fired as Michonne reeled forward with her sword flashing red. She had no idea anymore how many bodies stood and how many were falling, how many were piled in the street, but there was blood on her hands and face, in her hair, and she no longer felt human. She _was_ the gun, and this was her purpose.

Daryl taught her the litany. Now she understood why.

 _My eye. My mind. My heart._ Over and over, thrumming in her blood as she killed.

Was she remembering the face of her father now? Or was this something entirely different?

"They're gonna sweep over us!" Rick cried. "We have to break back to the-"

A rattle like a rapid drum of thunder, ripping through the night. Cracks like the earth splitting, like the world shattering. Beth had never heard anything like it and she spun, bewildered, searching through the chaos for whatever fresh hell this was. For a moment she saw nothing at all, barely heard anything anymore. Then she saw a hail of bright flashes from the end of the street, saw people falling back before them...

And saw Carol.

Carol, holding a gun like she had never seen before.

It was a rifle. She thought. But it was not wood. It was sleek and black, she could see even at that distance, something that looked like it might be metal. And it was firing more rapidly than any gun should fire, more rapidly - she was sure - than Daryl or Rick at the height of their speed. Carol was sweeping it back and forth, her face twisted into a grimace, and before her bodies twitched and danced and fell, torn apart. Others were fleeing, screaming, some still cackling insane laughter. The two remaining horses reared and turned and stampeded back down the street toward the mouth of the gorge, their riders desperately clinging. One stumbled and flung itself forward, crumpled to the ground; its rider tried to pull herself up, disentangle her leg, and Carol mowed her down. She jerked like a marionette and was still.

And then, somehow, there was silence.

At some point Beth realized she was weeping. She had been for a while.

Not total silence. Moaning. A few cries, choked, people croaking indecipherable words. It was no longer possible to distinguish the townsfolk from the attackers. Beth saw a couple of men and three women staggering toward the burning houses, silhouetted against the flames. She couldn't see their faces. A young man was crawling a few yards away from them, his own face just visible - half burned away. She could see the outline of his naked cheekbone, his jaw, flesh melted into his teeth. He dragged himself closer and she saw his legs were gone. Chopped off at the knee, flesh ragged.

Daryl stepped forward and put a bolt through his skull. He lay still.

"Gods," Michonne breathed. "Gods."

 _No,_ Beth thought. _No gods. Not here._

Carol was approaching them, the bizarre rifle lowered at her side. Daryl went to her and stood for a moment, staring at her. Beth could just see his face. He wore no discernible expression.

"We can't-" Carol started, and then Rick let out a quiet, horrified sound. As one they turned and followed his gaze, up to the still-burning stuffy-guy.

A stake had been driven into its middle. Tied to it, not yet obscured by flame, was a girl. Small, blond... pretty, before the fire had blistered and blackened her skin. But what had been carved into her forehead was still visible, dark in the light of the fire. The vicious cuts of the lines. The savage curves.

The eye.

Rick took a long breath. "All hail-"

"The Crimson King," Daryl whispered.

Golan was dead.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final stretch. Though I think the way might be long, say true.
> 
> I need to once again thank you, reader, if you've come this far with me, and with them. I think this continues to be a very odd AU, as they go, and not the kind people in this fandom seem to dive into very easily or very often. But out of everything I've written this probably continues to be my favorite, the thing I love most and of which I'm the most proud, and it means worlds that others are enjoying it too. 
> 
> So. Let's take to the road again.

 

**Part Three: Year's End**

 

1

 

The plains stretched before them, and in the setting sun they looked like not so much gold as blood.

A field of blood, Beth thought, watching it with a kind of dim, tired fascination as the horse plodded along beneath her, almost lulling her. She was leaning her cheek against Daryl’s shoulder; for a while she had tried to doze and had been unable to do so.

The last time she slept had been the afternoon before. The afternoon of Reaptide. Her sleep had discharged her into a world of blood and pain and death and hideous battle-joy, and now she felt as if she had come out from beneath another mountain, only the place into which she had emerged offered the light of neither sun nor moon nor stars.

It had only fields of blood, rippling in the breeze. Blood and, though she was unbearably weary, no sleep. _Not for you, gunslinger._

Behind them, the mountains receded. They had come out into the foothills shortly past the sun’s zenith, and by late afternoon they were truly in the plains, following the faint remains of what must have once been a small coach road, waves of grass on either side and stretching out before them. Beautiful land, she had thought at first - distantly, through her weariness and her lingering shock. But now it was already taking on the same monotonous sameness as the dry lands through which she and Daryl had first passed, and as far as she could see the plains continued endlessly on all three sides.

And soon even the mountains behind them would fade.

They traveled on three horses - the three they had taken to the thinny. The animals of Golan had made out marginally better than its people; the attackers seemed to have been far more interested in killing humans than beasts. When Carol had offered them, Beth had wondered if they should take them, wondered if they were only further plundering a town devastated almost to the point of nonexistence.

But Carol had insisted. Quietly, firmly. And neither Rick nor Michonne nor Daryl himself - in fact, especially not Daryl - had seemed inclined to argue with her. The truth, Beth had silently concluded, staring around at the street and the blood staining the dirt and the dead still strewn where they had fallen, not yet collected for the funeral pyre the tiny group of survivors was constructing, was that Golan no longer existed anyway. All but one of the houses had been burned. The main house still stood, and though its exterior had been somewhat damaged by fire, the damage was minimal. The mill had also been damaged, but was intact and probably salvageable. Nothing else remained but for a couple of the gardens and animal pens. The town's shared stable.

She could close her eyes and see it now. She thought she might see it in her dreams for some time to come.

She could also see Carol, her face strong and calm but drawn and exhausted and aged with sorrow - and yet somehow still beautiful - standing on the porch with Daryl before her, the strange rifle at her side. Beth had been helping saddle the horses and load them with bags of provisions, and hadn’t heard what they were saying to each other, but she could tell that Carol was doing most of the talking, Daryl listening with his head bowed. Presently whatever their talk had been about seemed to reach a conclusion, and Carol reached up and curved a hand over the nape of Daryl’s neck, tipped his head down to her and kissed his brow.

When he came to the horses, bow and gunna slung over his back, Beth could tell he had been weeping. Not hard, but the evidence was there.

Something knotted up and ached in her chest and she wanted to go to him. But something else held her back.

He was looking differently at her now. She didn’t entirely understand it, didn’t entirely know the words to describe it - but he was.

Rick stepped forward to meet him. “You sure you’re comin’ with us, then?”

Daryl hadn’t immediately answered. His gaze shifted from Rick to Michonne - and finally to Beth, where it rested. She looked back at him and felt that, for the first time since they had gone under the mountain together, there was a distance between them. They had been close, closer than she had ever believed she would be with anyone - close in ways she still couldn’t explain. Close in ways that seemed to go beyond the skin, to transcend the flesh. Now he was looking at her across a divide, his narrow blue eyes sad and a little confused.

He looked like a man who had lost something. Something dear.

"She’s comin’ with you," he said softly, and that was all.

Yes, she was. It hadn’t been a difficult decision, and she had made it without much serious thought. It had been made with instinct, with deep desire. Perhaps some of it was that she didn’t see how she could linger in a dead town, a burned town, a place far too much like the farm for her to avoid ghosts she had ultimately wanted to leave behind. But it was more than that. It was the eye carved into the girl’s forehead. The name Daryl and Rick had spoken. The quiet conversation she heard after, late into that terrible night, Rick and Michonne seated on the porch together and Daryl a little way away from all of them, cleaning his guns with numb, repetitive motions.

 _This wasn’t some random thing. They knew we were here. This was a message._ Rick lifting his head, his hat on the wooden slats beside him, looking up at the moon. _They want us to come after ‘em._

Michonne sat motionless, her sword in her lap. _And so we will,_ she murmured, and she had sounded not eager but resigned.

Almost as if none of this was a surprise to her.

Beth wanted to go. She didn’t need to know details. Not then. Looking at the smoldering ruins of the houses they hadn’t been able to even attempt to save, she wanted to go after the creatures who had killed Golan. Rick and Michonne’s reasons were their own.

Beth felt her reason like a hard fire in her gut. Restrained rage. First the farm. Now this.

And this and the farm had to be understood together. They did not exist apart.

"Carol’s not comin’ with us?" Beth asked as she climbed up behind Daryl, a hand on his back. He grunted, shook his head, didn’t turn to look at her. She expected no more from him, but after a few seconds of silence he spoke.

"This place is her home. She ain’t gonna run from it."

Run. There was a bite in that word, and the bite seemed to snap in all directions.

Carol came to them. The rifle was now slung over her shoulder. Watching her bearing it like that, Beth felt a tugging in her very much like what she had felt when she had first opened her eyes to see Carol looking back at her. This was familiar. Like so many other things.

Beth had almost stopped wondering at it.

"I won’t wish you a good journey," she said quietly. "I won’t wish you easy roads. I won’t even wish you long days and pleasant nights. I know you’ll have none of those. But I know why you’re going, and Rick…" She shook her head, slow. "I know where you’re bound."

Silence settled over all of them, and Carol’s gaze was hard and bright and keen.

"Do what you must, gunslinger," she said, and stood aside. Rick lowered his head and laid a fist against his brow, and nudged his horse into motion. With a nod deep enough to be close to a bow, Michonne followed.

Daryl reached down. Carol took his hand, held it, then released him. “Go,” she said, quiet and firm.

But before they did, she fixed Beth with that gaze and held her there, reached up and beckoned for Beth to lean down.

"Be with him," she said very softly - soft enough that Beth suspected Daryl couldn’t make it out. "He’ll pull away now. But he needs you. He needs you now more than ever. And he will. He’ll need you until this is ended. One way or another."

Beth nodded. She couldn’t think of anything else to do. Carol stretched up a hand and touched her cheek, fleeting - and then they rode away from what was left of Golan, and followed the road down past the ruin, past the thinny, and the plains opened before them.

She was moving on. Like the world.

So now the sun was setting, and Beth realized - not with any particular surprise - that it was setting roughly to their left. They were once again heading north, if directions still held mostly true - and there was something else. Something she had noticed before, she realized later, but hadn’t realized that she had. Like many things, in fact, but once she knew it, the idea that she had ever _not_ known it became beyond strange to her.

Like Daryl’s eyes on her. The way he looked at her. The way he always had, under everything.

She tilted her head back and looked up, and something about the bands of clouds moving overhead caught her attention and held it.

The bands. The way they moved. The pattern in it.

For there _was_ a pattern.

There was a pathway in the sky. For a moment or two she was sure it was her imagination, borne by her exhaustion. But no: it was there, subtle but now impossible to miss.The clouds were divided along the pathway and were moving roughly parallel to it, flowing almost like a river in its course. Beth stared up at it, her mouth slightly open, wondering.

_The Beams._

She didn’t know how she knew that word. That idea. It wasn't entirely clear to her, even now. But it was there in her mind, and when she looked down and ahead of them she saw it again. In the old road. In the way the rippling grasses grew. In the very shadows, the way the light fell.

It was all moving the same way. All oriented north.

The way Daryl had said he was going.

For a moment Beth almost touched Daryl’s shoulder, almost asked him. She felt sure he would know, and now she was sure he would tell her. One way or another, he was done hiding things from her. He might not be forthcoming, he might be pulling away, but she could demand something like that from him and he would give it to her.

_She’s comin’ with you._

Unspoken: _She’s comin' with you. So I’ll follow her._

She said nothing, and they rode on in silence. Overhead, in deepening shades of crimson and gold as the sun fell toward the horizon, the river of clouds flowed.

~

They stopped and made camp shortly before dusk. They did so quietly; Rick and Michonne seemed to exchange no more in the way of words than was strictly necessary, and Daryl didn’t speak at all. He took his bow and headed off into the thicker, taller grass. Hunting, Beth supposed. She did so unhappily. All the time together, and now he was like this. When he had been ready to build a life with her. Ready to give up everything for that. Now it seemed like something out of a fever dream, but it had been real.

Carol had said he would pull away, but this felt different. This felt like something else. Something more. Something had happened the night Golan died, and she didn’t understand.

Though she thought she might make a guess.

She helped Rick and Michonne make camp - not that there was much to do. In the end she sat on the open ground and watched Michonne sitting crossed-legged with her sword across her knees, oiling it, and Rick building up the fire as the horses grazed nearby. Beth was absently breaking a long strand of grass through her fingers. Her eyes were slightly unfocused, her attention turned inward, thinking of the weight of the guns on her hips the night before and how something was _missing_ now that they were no longer there. But her focus snapped back to Rick when she heard what he was murmuring, striking flint in the dimness.

_Spark-a-dark, where’s my sire? Will I lay me? Will I stay me? Bless this camp with fire._

Those camps, so early on. When she thought she had still hated him. Hated him and loved him both together. Those camps were a space that contained them, that he built for them. She could have left him, at the worst of her hatred. It would have been foolish, perhaps nearly suicidal, but she could have done it all the same.

_I’m not stayin’ in this suck-ass camp._

A wave through her. She closed her eyes. These things, too - these voices, distant, as if they were drifting to her over the land on the softest breeze - she no longer wondered at them. She knew it wasn’t madness, though what it could be… The walls between things were getting soft.

_That world. You saw it. It’s not just your world moving on, Beth. It’s all of them. That one is moving on very quickly indeed. That one is the nearest to you, the most neighborly, but there are others. Countless others._

"What’re you goin’ after?"

Rick looked up, seemed faintly startled. Across the fire, Michonne’s even, steady movements never once stuttered, but she was looking at Beth and her attention was sharply focused. The words had surprised Beth as well, but not that she would ask them at all. She had asked Daryl before, had received an answer she knew was truth - but it had not been the whole truth.

Rick and Daryl. Connected somehow, and more deeply than the bond that must lie in their guns.

Rick tilted his head. “Of course. He never told you.”

Beth shook her head. She didn’t need to ask _Told me what?_ The understanding was already there.

Rick appeared to consider for a moment, and the moment stretched out. “It’s a long story," he said at last, "and it goes a long way back. Touches other stories. Too many of ‘em, say true. I’d wait to tell it in full. And Daryl should be here for the tellin’. It’s a story he knows very well, even if he’s been keepin’ it from you.”

"He knows a lot of stories," Beth said quietly. Stories told to her in the dark, stories told to her as they lay together in his bed, her head on his chest. Stories on the porch with a cigarette between his fingers. They had flowed slowly out of him, and she had sensed that he had kept them to himself through many lonely years and now was relieved by the chance to share them. To remove some of the weight that lay on his mind. And to pass along some of what he knew, which any man who knew much must want to do.

"What _has_ he told you?" Michonne, still watching her. Her words and her eyes both pierced.

Beth shrugged. “About him and his brother. His father. Told me about Gilead. Told me about Arthur Eld and his gunslingers.” She paused and felt her mouth stretch into a faint smile. “Told me about Apon and Lydia. Old Mother and Old Star.”

Rick and Michonne exchanged a look she couldn’t quite read.

"He loves you," Michonne said presently.

Beth blinked, slightly thrown back. But of course it must be obvious, and she wasn’t going to deny it. She nodded slowly, and again a look was exchanged.

"You gotta be careful with that," Rick said. "It’s good that he does. Good that you’re with him. Say true, I think that’s part of why he’s with us now, and that’s a good thing, for we can use another pair of guns. Two more pairs of hands. And that bow…" His mouth drew into a thin line. "But love was ever a treacherous thing. There was a saying I remember from way back… _Was there ever a trap to match the trap of love?_ "

Beth cocked her head, bemused. “Pretty forward there, Sai Grimes, ain’tcha?”

The thin line of Rick’s mouth pulled into a thinner smile. “Forward’s needed, girl. The world’s moved on.”

A rustle in the grass a few yards away. Rick’s hand went to his gun - Beth guessed by instinct - and Daryl stepped into the circle of firelight, a rabbit gripped in one hand. It was small but it didn’t look too scrawny, and as he approached Beth saw that it appeared to be well in body. Safe for eating.

They had meat, if course. But it was salted and dried. Fresh was better, as long as they could get it, and it would help stretch the provisions they already had.

The four of them sat in silence as Daryl skinned, gutted, and spitted the rabbit over the fire. He sat back after, took a place beside Beth and cleaned his knife. Moving half without thought, she shifted closer to him, and he didn’t pull back. And when she leaned into him, pressed her shoulder against his, he hesitated a moment and then pressed back, letting out an almost imperceptible sigh.

And then she knew that if he was distant from her now, it wasn’t because he wanted to be. That he might desire that distance to be erased more than anything. There was only that sadness. That confusion.

She wished she could help him. Wished it so much it hurt her

They ate, still in silence, and they had just finished when Rick lifted his head.

"We’ve begun somethin’," he said, his voice quiet and clear. "Golan was the start, but it truly started longer before. Long ago. We all came to it bearin’ stories, and if we’re to go on together those stories should be told." He paused and looked around at the three of them, and there was a solid calmness in him that made him captivating.

 _He’s a leader,_ Beth thought. Then, _He’s a dinh._

"I don’t know your stories," he went on, nodding at her and Daryl. "Least, not all. And you don’t know all of ours. And there’s what we’re after. What lies ahead. That should be made plainest of all."

Of course, she found she already knew it.

 _Gun and key and rose and Tower._ All these things were already within her.

Perhaps they always had been.

"Ka’s brought us together. Now we’ll know a little of the path of its turn. Let the palaver begin."

And as the Demon Moon rose overhead, ruddy as a bloodshot, baleful eye, it did.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of stories. Stories within stories within stories. Worlds within worlds within worlds.
> 
> But the Tower is closer.

 

 

2

 

The palaver went on for hours.

Twice the fire had to be built back up. Twice a water skin was passed around for mouths dry from talking. The Demon Moon rose high and red, and cast an eerie glow onto the grasslands and onto the four. Beth watched it rise and looked around at their faces - trying to be unobtrusive - and marked the way it seemed to age them, make them look almost inhuman. She still recognized them and she didn't fear them, but she gazed at them and thought of demons, and she thought of the night Golan died and the fire and the twisted faces of monsters in human form, and the men and women and children who had been struck down.

She thought of how the world had moved on, and how now she was beginning to truly understand what that meant.

But that was after. At Rick's bidding she told her story first, and while she didn't particularly want to, there was something about Rick that made him difficult to disobey. Something she had sensed in him when he had first spoken. While Daryl had taught her the word _dinh_ \- a leader, a commander of men - she had never met one, and she had recognized that Daryl was not one and very likely didn't wish to be. But Rick was. It was unmistakable.

And another thing she didn't for a moment mistake was the way Daryl looked at him. What it meant, she wasn't entirely yet sure. But it was yet one more thing she didn't know what to make of, and which worried her.

Perhaps for near the same reason he seemed worried.

So she told her story, and she told it from the beginning to the fire around which they sat. The farm, the simplicity and innocence of her childhood. Shawn and Maggie and her father, her mother, the books she read even as a child, the stories she learned and which she had always assumed were merely that - stories and nothing more. The day Daryl came to the farm - and there Rick and Michonne's attention seemed to sharpen, and though they didn't move at all she felt as if they were leaning forward. It was uncomfortable, but she pushed through it, and was freshly aware of Daryl beside her, close - his solidity, his warmth. And she thought of lying in his bed, pressed against him, and his mouth on hers - surprisingly soft given the calloused, scarred hardness of the rest of him. How he was so gentle with her. How, with him, she had come to feel so safe.

That, and then back to how things were at first when he took her from the farm, and she was so angry, so sad, feeling so betrayed. Betrayed by everything. As good as kidnapped, though in truth he had saved her life, and even then she had known it perfectly well. How he had given her everything, she now realized: the greater share of the water when there was little to be had, and greater rations of what food he carried. His tea to calm her mind and her heart. His bandanna to protect her head, and his poncho when she shivered in the night. How he had talked to her, even when the talking was difficult. Been willing to share parts of himself which, perhaps, he had never truly shared with anyone.

How he had been kind. She hadn't known it, and his demeanor hadn't been _kind_ in the way she had been raised to think of it. But his kindness had been there.

Perhaps even then he had loved her, say true.

She thought of these things, and she told the story of how they were chased into the mountains by the mutie wolves and had discovered the slow mutants there - not slow at all. How they had been attacked. How Daryl had been injured. How they lost the light and wandered in the dark for what she thought must have been mere days, but which - and here she glanced at Daryl in a silent question and he gave her a single nod:  _yar, go on and tell them_ \- how they had in fact been lost underground without light or hope for a full two months. How she found the door, how they escaped, how Daryl nearly died and how she cared for him. Then how she was found, and at that point she stopped, looked down at her hands where they lay loosely folded in her lap, and was silent.

And she realized there were things she hadn't said. The full terror of that journey through the dark, yes. There had been no way to put that into words. And how she had slowly come to love him, and how she was sure he had done the same. How it felt to hold him in her arms, feel him weaken, know that he was dying and there was nothing she could do but be with him until the end, guide him along his path to where it ended in the clearing and let him go.

She said none of this. Perhaps it came through in what she did say, but she made no effort in that respect.

But she also didn't speak of her dreams.

And she didn't speak of the Man in Black.

She was sure Daryl noticed these omissions. What he thought, she had no idea.

Rick looked at her for a long moment and seemed to be gauging her. Then - apparently satisfied for the moment - he turned his attention to Daryl.

Beth built up the fire as he talked. He spoke slowly, a little haltingly, and as she listened, Beth noticed that he too was omitting things. Small details, things he had shared with her, mostly insignificant. But their absence in his story still struck her as noteworthy.

He might look at Rick with something almost uncomfortably like worship. But he didn't yet trust the man. Not completely.

Not with his heart.

He spoke of his childhood in the dry hills, almost entirely alone with his father and Merle. Of the death of his mother in a fire - and of that she knew almost nothing. He spoke of the growing madness of his father, of the cruelty that followed, and - in the vaguest of terms - of his father's obsession and what led him to pit Daryl and Merle together. Of Daryl's growing rage and despair. Of Merle's ultimate flight, and of Daryl's test. Of his failure, or of what he saw as failure. Of taking up the guns, and then - in no great detail at all - of how he had wandered for twenty years, seeking without any success the brother he had lost so long ago.

"I'd given him up, say true," Daryl said after a pause. "I was willin' to let him go. I was tired. Had enough of it. You look for someone that long and get nothin'... Maybe there ain't no point no more."

Again a pause, and Rick seemed content to let itself play out. But Daryl said nothing else, and at last he rose and went to fetch wood, and then it was Michonne's turn.

Her tale was, like Beth's, actually relatively simple. She had been raised by her mother and father - both carpenters and both kindly - in a village further south along the edge of the trackless Mohaine desert, near one of the cities abandoned by the Old Ones, who had left their broken crystal and metal towers and their mysterious, silent machines behind. Machines marked by strange words and signs. _North Central Positronics Ltd.,_ of course, but other names and sigils. _Citgo,_ for one. Many others.

For many years - since her birth - the city lay nameless and empty, and the people of her village refused to go near it. No one had been able to make anything of the machines or the sigils, and there were stories of vast, haunted tunnels under the city itself, containing the spirits of the people who built it - spirits that jibbered and wailed and sang terrifying, discordant songs. Better, it was said, to leave well enough alone.

Then the harriers came.

They came in a large band, perhaps fifty of them, riding across the desert on horses and mules, more on foot or drawn in carts. They came with long knives and clubs, and while they seemed to have little interest in the village and rode past it some way to the north. they had intense interest in the city, and there they made camp. Not long after, bizarre and alarming noises were heard there, and lights at night which many of the townsfolk swore by watch and warrant were the ghosts of the Old Ones driven out of their tunnels by the harriers and making ready to fly across the land and consume everything in their path.

Michonne - then not much older than Beth - gave these stories little credence. She didn't believe in ghosts. But she did believe in harriers, and she believed in the machines of the city, and that the machines might be dangerous.

And that there might be more dangerous things still.

Weeks past with nothing more alarming than the noises - rumbles and booms and odd grinding sounds - and the ghost-lights. Then one gray morning, when much of the town was still asleep, a _boom_ came from the city which shook the very ground and broke the few true glass windowpanes the town's buildings boasted. People rushed into the street in a panic, and above the city - strangely beautiful in the dawn light - was rising a great silver cloud. It shimmered, almost like metal shavings in the air.

Later Michonne was never sure why she had run, and run before anyone else truly suspected the imminent danger. "I just knew," she said quietly. There was a hardness in her voice, the kind that comes when a wall has been erected against great pain. "I tried to tell my ma'. My da'. They wouldn't listen. They were afraid, too afraid even to run. So I ran without them, when their backs were turned. I ran into the desert. Probably I should've died anyway." She gave them all a tight, humorless smile. "But Ka is a wheel, so they say."

She had returned three days later, when the wind pushed the cloud away from the town over which it had settled.

Bodies were everywhere. Strewn in the road where they had fallen, their faced black and swollen, tongues protruding, blood crusted around their noses and mouths. Everywhere, the same. She searched all the houses, the saloon, the one general store. People fallen, people curled in on themselves, people who had clearly attempted to hide - as if one could hide from the very air.

And, in her own home, her parents curled together in their bed. Their hands clasped and their heads bent together, as if at the last they realized what was coming for them and the impossibility of escape, and had chosen to die in each other's arms.

Michonne had looked at them for a long time. Then she packed up what supplies she could carry and set off toward the northwest, where she knew the land was softer and she might find some kind of shelter. Some kind of survival.

She came upon another town, a bit larger than her own. She took work at a smithy, and fortunately the young smith was kind and treated her well and let her sleep in his workshed. Then, after he knew her better, he let her sleep on the floor of his house, which was little more than a shack but was far more comfortable than the shed. Then, a little over a year later, she went to his bed and didn't leave it.

He married her. They had one son. She was happy, truly happy, and was foolish enough - she said - to believe her happiness might last.

Then - again, for Ka is a wheel - came harriers.

Different than the ones who had camped in the city, and probably released the poison that had killed her home. But what difference was there? They came and they broke and pillaged and burned, dragged people into the street and killed them for their amusement, took the women of the town and used them however they pleased. Michonne and her husband and son took refuge in the cellar of the shack, but it was barely a day before they were found and dragged out. The chief of the band was a tall, skinny man with narrow eyes and a toothless grin, not physically strong but clearly smarter than the rest of them, and able to command that the best of all the spoils be given to him first. What he intended for her was more than obvious, and that was when her husband - her poor, kind, stupid husband - tried to save her. Managed to break free, take up a half-beaten piece of iron from the forge, and rush the leader.

He was cut down before he got within a foot of the man, a dagger in the back of his neck.

Then, to punish her - to _teach_ her, said the harrier chief - they dashed out her son's brains in front of her.

In the moments after, she was unafraid. The kind of total lack of fear that comes when one has seen everything else stripped away, when even grief seems pointless. She was ready to do what her husband had died for, what was certainly suicide: Rush the chief, try to at least hurt him before she was cut down in her turn. She had been ready. Looking into her eyes as he made to have her dragged away, he had known it, and it had amused him.

Then Rick's bullet blew the man's brain out through his forehead.

The rest of them were quick work. The ones Rick didn't kill ran for their lives. Michonne watched, speechless - not with fear but with awe, and in fact not even with awe but with _desire._ For she saw, looking at this man who bore death in his hands, a thing she wanted not to be but which she knew she already _was_.

It was just a question of finding her weapon.

Rick took her with him. He asked few questions. There were few to ask. She asked him few as well, and in time answers revealed themselves. Together they traveled roughly north - or tried to do so, but the way was strange and seemed to keep shifting, and distances stretched out far beyond what they should have. Which, by now, no one wondered at. But it had been frustrating. More than once it had been dangerous.

In the face of that danger, they taught each other. They both learned a great deal.

As she spoke, Beth felt a prickle of familiarity, and then a stab which repeated, over and over. Because this was a story she knew. She knew it very well.

So the wheel of Ka ever turned.

The sword? Ah, that was a tale. Months after Rick had saved her from the harriers, in a dense forest uncountable miles behind them, she had been on watch while Rick slept, when a powerful sense of being _drawn_ had come over her. At first she attempted to resist it, but before long it overwhelmed her and pulled her away from the dying fire and into the shadows of the trees, where moonlight didn't penetrate. It tugged her on, taking her to a path which probably would have been barely visible to her under normal circumstances but which then showed clearly as a wide and well-used coach road.

"I followed it," she said. "I couldn't describe it after, and I can't describe it now. You ever feel, somewhere, as if you're exactly where you should be? As if you and the whole world are falling into step, one with the other? It was like that. I followed, and then all the trees fell away and I could see the sky clear, and I saw stones. Standing up like teeth in the moonlight. Of course I knew what it was. I'd seen the like before. I wasn't afraid, though maybe I should've been. I went into the Speaking Ring and I found the sword."

Daryl, who had been staring at the fire, jerked his head up at that, and Beth caught both sharp awareness and confusion in his eyes.

"It was empty," Michonne added. "The Ring. The stone circle, some of the stones fallen, the altar in the middle... Nothing. No spirit. No Speaking Demon. Just..." She gave them all a strange smile. "On the altar was the sword. I took it. As soon as I touched it, whatever had grabbed me let me go."

She paused for a long moment. Rick leaned over and fed the fire. Daryl had lowered his head again, withdrawing back into his own thoughts. But Beth looked across the fire at Michonne and Michonne looked back, and Beth knew she felt the same recognition.

It was no accident. None of it was.

There wasn't much else to tell. No one taught Michonne to use the sword. She learned. She learned by using, by killing when she had to - when she _could_ \- and by simply handling it, spinning around saplings, around thin trees, around anything that could stand like a man. At first it was clumsy, but gradually it became natural and fluid, like a dance - and she had never been much of one for dancing.

"It was like I found the one thing I was missing," she said softly, gazing into the fire. "I hadn't even known. Suddenly I was... Not complete. That wouldn't be fair to say. But I could do what I was supposed to do. I wasn't just clinging to his heels." She grinned suddenly and shot Rick a look full of amused affection, which Rick returned with a hint of a smile.

Something much wider and warmer behind that smile. And Beth wondered.

Perhaps the likenesses here were even closer than she had realized.

"But that's it. We've been traveling since. That was two years ago. Now we've come here."

She fell silent, and the silence settled over them. The wind whispered through the grass, and somewhere a nightbird's cry cut through the air. As if in response, the fire snapped and sent up a burst of sparks.

It was a signal, through from whom or what Beth didn't know. Rick cleared his throat and seemed to grow taller in the flickering light, broader, somehow more _real._ Beth watched this, bemused, but once more with no real surprise. Very little about this was now surprising to her.

"So now we come to me." Rick hesitated, looking around at the three of them. "It's a long story, and in fact it doesn't begin with me. My own story isn't so long at all. It's not so complicated. My father was one of the last gunslingers forced out of Gilead when Gilead fell. Everyone assumed he died. He didn't. My mother died in the war with John Farson, and my father raised me alone. He taught me everything he could. He knew his time was over. He knew _my_ time might be over before it began, but he also knew he couldn't just give under the weight of what happened. He saw his friends die. His brothers. He wasn't gonna to let those deaths lose all their meaning."

Daryl grunted. "Lot for a boy to carry."

"Yar. It was. It is." Rick paused again, and as he next began to speak he closed his eyes. His voice rose into the night, deepened, became close and also more distant, and Beth realized she had heard this before. When Daryl told her his stories, his greater stories. His deeper, older stories.

There was power in these that went beyond the simple fact of their telling.

"This last story is all the stories," Rick said slowly. "Every story, in one. The hub of the wheel. Without this story, nothing else can possibly make sense. So I'll tell it now, and once it's done we'll talk of what comes next, where we're going, what we'll all have to do. This story begins and ends in the center of all the worlds, all there ever were and ever will be.

"It begins with a Tower."


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In many respects this one of the chapters I was waiting to write. Because in many respects this is where everything changes.

 

 

3

 

Stories are powerful things. Stories are enchantments, spells. Stories are hypnotism, a bullet's shell rolling from knuckle to knuckle, conferring sleep and strange dreams. Stories are not a solitary business; in each story the listener and the teller are joined in a profound and intimate alchemy that transforms words into hands and fingers and long lines that stretch back through time and touch everyone who has ever told that story before.

Stories transform.

Stories are not lies, even if they are fiction. Fiction is not an untrue thing. Fiction is the deepest truth, spun from the heart and the inner workings of the self, assembled by craftsmen and magicians both. Creation is the scar left behind when the gods touched the mind and the heart of man and set them into motion. Creation is the tiny spark of the divine in each one of us. Only a fool would call a myth pure deception.

A story of a beginning is the most powerful thing of all, creation of creation within creation, and it is dangerous as well, for it requires great courage to begin a thing and commit to seeing it through.

Each story is a risk. Every story ever told was an act of pure will. To make and then to repeat, to carry the fire onward into the future. Flames in cupped palms, altered and reformed but never allowed to die. Heritage. Birthright.

In our stories we remember the faces of all our fathers.

So as Rick Grimes began to speak, far away - uncountable leagues distant in a vast crimson field, a sea of living blood watched over by a dark monument that pierced the sky like the finger of a dead god, a wind stirred the petals of a rose, and the suns that lay nestled in its burning heart burned brighter.

_And the Tower was closer._

~

_In the beginning of all things, before any things yet were, before all that came later was made and all the worlds were not even the seed of a dream, when existence was only the seething chaos of the Prim, Gan - the first and the greatest of the gods - rose from that chaos and spun each of the many universes from his belly, and set them in their places._

_This is the beginning of everything, so you must understand that like most long-distant beginnings a great deal has been forgotten. A great deal is unclear. Many of the old stories disagree with each other, and it can be difficult to be sure of most of the details. But of Gan, we know for certain, and of the Prim, and of what came after._

_Gan created all the worlds, then. Gan brought order to primordial chaos, and as he spun the worlds the waters of the Prim began to recede. As they did, they left demons and spirits on the shores of the worlds, and those things linger today - and as the world moves on it seems they're even growing more powerful. So what you must understand is that, in spite of what some folk say, there was no time when everything was good. There was no perfection ruined by some mistake, some error, some fall. The worlds have been troubled since they were first birthed, and troubled they ever shall be until at last they find the clearings at the ends of their own paths._

_For each living thing owes a death, and a world is no different. Say true. Say sorry._

_As the other gods came into being and the worlds began to take on more intricate form and shape, Gan perceived that something would be needed to keep in place the order he created. So from the Prim he raised six Beams... and from his own bones and spirit he raised a great Dark Tower._

_The Dark Tower is the center of all the worlds, like the hub of an immense wheel, with each Beam a spoke. It contains all worlds, each one, and within its walls and rooms it keeps them well. Its floors number six hundred, and to enter it one must past through a door of Ghostwood on which is writ the word_ unfound _. In a place called End-World it sits amidst a field of roses, and it has stood there for millennia uncountable._

 _As I said, this beginning is mostly lost to us. What we know for certain is what_ is _._

_The Tower was meant to stand forever - or as near forever as ever may be. The Beams would have supported it, for Gan made them to last as long as the Tower itself. But at some point in that distant past - in our world of Mid-World - there arose the Great Old Ones, with their machines and their magic and their melding of the two, and they replaced Gan's Beams with Beams of their own. They found cures for diseases that should have had no cure at all, found ways to make children with no mother or father, and some say they even found a way to travel to the moon. In short, they brought forth wonders that they believed would astonish even the gods, and as such they became arrogant - and greedy, and fell to squabbling with each other and then to open warfare, and all their knowledge and all their skills were bent to the purpose of destruction and the making of weapons to that end._

_We know nothing of the wars that followed, except that they were terrible and they left scars - poisons that linger in the land and in the water, and in bloodlines. And at the end of the wars very little of the Old Ones remained, except for the few broken ruins we still find now and then. The Old Ones themselves - the ones who were left - made peace with each other, but it was too late. Destruction like that doesn't end when war ends. It continued. And before long there were no more Old Ones at all, and Mid-World fell into a long darkness._

_That darkness was ended after a thousand years by the coming of Arthur Eld and his gunslingers, and with them he sought - and for a time succeeded - to return light and order to Mid-World. He established the Affiliation of baronies and built the city of Gilead in the barony of New Canaan - and this was the city of my father, and of all my fathers._

And he stopped then and looked at Daryl, and Beth marked well the way Daryl didn't meet his eyes.

_Then the city fell to John Farson and his men, and Steven Deschain - the dinh of all gunslingers, ya ken - was killed and his son Roland fled New Canaan after a battle in which - many believed - all other gunslingers were killed as well._

Rick paused again, his head slightly lowered. Beth had drawn her knees up against her chest and hugged them, staring alternately at him and at the fire. Beside her, Daryl seemed more and more distant, as if he was pulling away and slipping into the dark. She felt young, too young, and afraid...

And she also felt old. Far too old. The stirring in her blood was ancient and weary, the movement of an old soldier who hasn't forgotten how to fight and won't turn and run from a battle but who doesn't relish the prospect.

 _I remember their names,_ Rick said softly, his words drifting into the fire and carried into the sky with the smoke and the sparks. Carried to the stars. Still his story - but nearer. Closer to him and to them. _I remember all their names. My father - who did not die at the Battle of Jericho Hill as many believed - taught them to me. Each one. He taught them to me so that when the time came I would remember them very well, and I would sing each one._

_I would sing them as I come to the Tower._

_Because aye, I seek the Tower._

_The world is moving on, say true. But it's far worse than that. Farson was only a symptom of a much deeper disease, as a cough or a sneeze might be the first sign of a killing fever. The Dark Tower was meant to stand forever, but its Beams were replaced. They can crack. They can break. A power great enough could find a way. And I was taught - and I believe - that's exactly what's happening._

_Because there's a king. A Crimson King._

Above them, the Demon Moon seemed to swell, a slow pulse like the beat of an infected heart.

_Where he comes from isn't fully known. No one knows his mind. No one can be sure of what he believes, what he thinks, the deepest truths of what he wants. What we know is that he wants the Tower. He wants to bring it down. Whatever he believes will come after - if he even believes he might somehow survive such destruction - it doesn't matter. What matters is what he can do._

_And he can do a great deal._

_Even now he batters at the Beams, and they're beginning to weaken. To break. The fabric that holds the worlds together is fraying, thinning. Time, distance, size, speed... None of these things are reliable any longer. If the King is allowed to continue his work, the Tower will fall. When that happens, every world in existence will come to an end and the only thing left will be the new - far more poisoned - chaos of Discordia._

Rick sat straighter, his head lifted, his face proud and cold. Beth looked at him and knew that when he spoke of the Tower he felt it too - that same weary stirring, that terrible need. He felt it and he saw it in her.

He had seen it for a long time.

Had Daryl?

_Like my father before me - and all his fathers before him - I am a gunslinger. My bloodline protected order and love and light - we served the White. I serve it now. I go to find the Tower, to stop its fall. To see it saved._

He paused, and into that pause Beth dove without thought.

"How?"

Rick blinked - and then gave her a quizzical little smile. "I trust that'll be revealed when I get there."

"You trust a lot," Michonne said, sounding quietly amused. Familiar, as if she had heard this story before. Beth supposed she had. She herself might, she thought, be the only one in the circle who _hadn't_ heard this story. Her father's books had contained none of it, aside from vague references to Gan. To the Prim. Only now did it strike her as strange.

As if, like Daryl, he had been purposefully keeping things from her.

"Aye. What else is there to do? Ka reveals things in time. Or it doesn't. In the end we don't have a lot to do with it."

His voice slipped back into the rhythm and cadence of the story.

_In Golan we saw the servants of the King. You saw his sigil carved into the brow of the girl made a Reaptide sacrifice. But they didn't come for Golan. They came for me. For us. He knows gunslingers are walking the land once more. If Roland still lives, the King doubtless knows of him too. He'll do what he can to stop us all._

A pause then, another one, and it went on for a long time. Beth glanced at Daryl and saw that once again his head was lifted, and this time he was meeting Rick's gaze. Meeting it squarely, his eyes narrow, clear, cut chips of ice. Hawk's eyes. Rick looked at no one but him, but all the same Beth felt his attention locked on her, and she felt the tug in her intensify to the sensation of someone dragging at her arm.

Through the thinny. To the door she and Daryl had made between them. The key. The rose. The red field. The Tower beyond. Pulling everything she was, her blood, her eye and her mind and her heart and her hands which - she now understood - were made to bear the iron and the steel of Eld.

What Daryl hadn't wanted her to know. Why he had been so determined to keep her with him, to keep them in Golan. What his father had wanted. Died for. The path he refused to follow then, and was trying still to refuse. Of which he was so afraid. What Finn had said, his lies spun with truth. And Rick, holding him with that terrible, ruthless gaze, beating him down.

And her, between them. That pull. She felt it fully.

Daryl... And the Tower.

She closed her eyes briefly and felt faintly ill. She wanted to touch him. But she was somehow certain that if she tried, her hand would meet only empty air.

Rick finally broke his locked gaze and looked around at all of them. Daryl let out a breath. Again the fire flared.

"We are ka-tet," Rick said, the storytelling gone out of his voice but the ancient loveliness of the High Speech remaining. "We are one from many. I believe we were all meant to find each other. I believe this with everything I am. We'll track the servants of the King, we'll ride to them and discover whatever secret knowledge they hold, and we'll end them. Then together we'll journey to the Dark Tower.

"Together we'll stand and be true."

The silence that followed was so complete, like a solid thing descending on them, that at first Beth didn't realize Daryl had gotten to his feet and turned away. Rick's eyes followed him, as did Michonne's, and Beth rose to her knees and faced him, staring at his back as he headed away from the fire and into the darkness.

She got up, her heart a fist in her throat.

"Beth," Rick said, his voice once again soft. "He'll come back. Leave him be."

But she couldn't. She never could have done. If the Tower was pulling her to itself, this was another pull, and just as strong. Darkness on either side of her, she sensed. Fearful darkness, as deep and as long as the darkness under the mountain. But hadn't she carried him through that? Hadn't they carried each other? Hadn't he returned to her in the end?

Together, didn't they make a door?

She followed him, knowing this must be a trap, that it was all a trap, that it had always been. That she was the Man in Black's instrument placed in Daryl's path, just as Golan had been placed in the path of both of them. She knew it very well and yet she went, and she reached for him without ever raising her hands.

_For was there ever a trap to match the trap of love?_


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Been a while, partly because other AU has devoured me. But I don't intend to leave this unfinished. Not so close to the end.

 

 

4

 

Daryl knew the dark. He knew it in all its forms, in all its shapes. He knew it in the way it crept through trees and their trunks and branches, the way it extended spiderweb fingers over the ground and the body and mind of whoever was caught in its path. He knew the darkness that lurked in corners and pits, the darkness of caves and hidden places. He knew dark water and its deathly chill. He knew - now - the darkness of two months lost in two days in a world of hellish blindness from which he thought he would never emerge. He knew the darkness of illness, of encroaching death, and the terror that waited there - the lie that there was any peace at all in the clearing at the end of the path.

He knew the darkness in himself. Seeded there by his father. By his blood. Watered by his own rage and hatred, raised in the light of a Demon Moon. The darkness that fed the guns, that chained them to his hands.

The darkness of night was a kind, simple thing by comparison, and he fled into it with sick relief, Rick's voice fading behind him as the shadows swallowed him.

_Beth. He'll come back. Let him be._

He didn't want to hate Rick. But here he was, hating him all the same. Hating him and loving him both in equal measure, both their own kind of interlocking trap. He hated and loved Rick, he now understood, in a way not unlike what he felt for his brother. The desire to find, to hold, to keep close. The desire to be free. A need so deep and so fundamental that it transcended all thought. The need Ka made, when it willed. When it demanded that a tet be woven into existence.

Love and hate. What else could he feel for the man who was his ka-dinh?

And if only he could hate Beth. Because now...

Now she was on the path to the Tower. And nothing he could do would ever turn her aside.

Because once was not enough. _And Ka is a wheel, its one purpose to turn._

She was following him. She was making no particular effort to hide the sound of her movement, but even if she had he would have known; even if she had been able to make herself silent as a ghost he would have known she was there. She was there because she had to be - because wasn't that also how this would go? How it would always go? Simple. Ingenious. Or maybe not. Maybe a child could have set this trap. The oldest and the greatest of them.

Apon and Lydia, throwing their crockery across the sky-that-was-not-yet-the-sky. Torn apart by their pride and rage, yet always they yearned to be together, and perhaps someday, if they reunited, their broken plates and cups would be cleared away, the floor swept clean, and the universe would come to an end.

Followed by Beth - not far behind - and with only the moon to light his way, he headed through the grass and over a small rise and onto the lower ground on the other side. He knew without having to look back that the fire was only a red speck in the distance - like a star in the ground's mirrored night. He could hear the soft murmuring of flowing water, smell it, and he slowed.

All their progress had been, in some way or another, marked by water. The creek in which she had bathed, and he hadn't watched her - except he had, just a little. The dammed lake. The small river that flowed out of the mountains and through the valley in which Golan lay - had once laid. Now this, and while he could hardly see it at all - could see only the broken crimson reflection of the moon on its rushing face - it drew him, and it had done so the moment he rose from the fire.

Fire and water. Forever at odds, forever bound to find each other again.

He stopped in a clear patch of ground just before the sandy bank began, and he turned and looked at her.

She was half thrown into light and half in shadow, her hair a shining red-gold, the lines of her face harder than usual. Like this, she looked older - older, perhaps, even than him. This girl he had watched become so much more than a girl, except she was _always_ so much more than that. From the moment he saw her she had carried a secret inside herself, and the moment he had touched her it broke its shell, unfurled itself, began to grow. Half an hour before, he had been ready to blame Rick for almost everything, but that wasn't fair. It wasn't true. Daryl was just as much to blame, if not more.

In some deep, terrible way, he had made her.

"Why'd you leave?"

He simply looked at her. At last he shook his head.

"No. Don't give me that. You tell me why." She stepped forward, fists clenched at her sides. "You owe me that. You've been tellin' me things, you've been openin' _up_. You don't get to stop that now."

He glared at her, stung - or he made himself so, because it was easier than feeling what lay below it. "You're tellin' me what I do and don't _get to do?_ Hell, girl, you ain't my _dinh_. Whatever Rick was sayin' back there about ka-tet... That much, I'm sure of."

"No," she said softly. He almost winced at that softness. "Rick is. And that scares you, doesn't it? Scares you half to death."

Once again he didn't answer her. Wanted so much to turn away, and knew he couldn't. No, this girl wasn't his dinh. She was something more. Something worse. He might love Rick, might feel an almost overwhelming urge to bend knee to him and swear fealty. But that was nothing compared to what he felt for Beth Greene.

He would follow this girl. Follow her anywhere. Not his dinh, no.

It was so much more horrible to be someone's love.

"I ain't scared of _nothin_ '," he said, and it was a lie. Was meant to be said as a lie. He knew she would know it was a lie, and as it passed his lips it tasted like cold ashes. It might have been ritual. He said it to her when he was bathing at the well, when she saw his back. When he felt - for the second time - that he loved her without understanding why. In a way that was impossible. Because he had known her barely a day.

Except he had known her so much longer than that. Running together, through woods and meadows. Fighting. Surviving. Trying to do more than survive - when she _made_ him do more than that. Made him look past it.

Made him see her.

She smiled at him then, tight and sad, and he looked at her and his heart cracked. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair to love someone this much and watch them dragged onto a road that would kill their body, or their soul, or both.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Why didn't I tell you what?" But he already knew.

"The Tower. You kept that from me. You said you were gonna tell me, but you never meant to. You were gonna hide it as long as you could. Rick said it was the center of everything. Was he right?"

Misery wrenched at him. He nodded, and it took everything in him to keep from turning his face away. She was half in shadow but she was brilliant as the sun.

"Then _why?_ "

Incredulity swept over him. It shouldn't - she was right to be unsure of his motivations, even if she suspected them, or at the very least she was right to demand an explanation - but it was there and just as intense as his anger, and it was the same kind of shield against himself. "You serious, girl? You're really askin' me that? After everythin' else I told you? After what you've _seen?_ "

"Yeah, I'm askin' you." She took another step toward him, fists still clenched, her voice hard. She wasn't going to back down. Ruthless girl. The steel of Eld in her veins. "Don't matter what I know or don't know. You're gonna tell me. You're gonna _say it._ 'cause you wouldn't before, and I'm done with you not tellin' me things. You wanna be with me? You want that? You've been actin' like you do. But you can't. Not if you're hidin' things. So you fuckin' _tell me._ "

The word... Not a word she really ever used. A kind of rough gentility in her, and he knew it came from Hershel. He almost laughed - it was such a little thing, but it stood out to him, and for the briefest of moments the love in him swelled up and drowned everything else.

Her strength and her sweetness.

He couldn't bear to watch that get burned away.

He turned, looked out over the water. It was too much. He couldn't look at that face, couldn't look in her eyes - the eyes with which she aimed, would always aim now. Eyes that hit him like bullets and tore through him, revealed everything. "I told you," he said. His voice was flat. "My da'. My _father_. You know how he died, you know why - you know what it was _like_? Watchin' him lose himself? You know what he was losin' it _to?_ " He let out a hard, humorless sound, the carcass of a laugh. "What he did to me. What he did to my brother. Made us do to each other. You think Rick is gonna stay the way he is? You think he's gonna keep that fuckin' _honor_ he has?"

He glanced back at her, almost baring his teeth at her. The rage was back, and it was terrible - and it wasn't even at her. It might have been better if it was. Then it would have an object, rather than seething around inside him, directionless.

"It's gonna burn him away. It's gonna _kill_ him. And you're gonna follow him now, because you can't not. You get that? He sure as shit did. That's why he told you. Draggin' you with him. Killin' you, and if you asked him he would say it was _worth it_. For his Tower. _Worlds to win."_ He spat into the dust, wishing he actually felt that much scorn, and whirled on her, desperation gripping him. Twisting him. He knew she must be able to see it. He prayed she would understand - prayed to gods in which he hadn't placed faith in years. "Don't you get it, girl? I was tryin' to fuckin' _save you._ "

He fell silent. She stared at him. All the anger gone now, only pain in its place. Twenty years of it. Longer. A lifetime. More than a lifetime. Worlds. Losing her, finding her, losing her again. Reaching for her in the dark and touching only more darkness.

Together they made a door. Where did that door lead?

At last she took a breath. Somehow, without him noticing, she had closed the rest of the distance between them. Or space itself had altered its shape for the sole purpose of bringing them together. And he didn't think this was Walter o'Dim's doing. Nor, somehow, did he even believe it was Ka.

Perhaps it was only her. The force of her will.

His _dan-tete._

"You can't save me." She reached up and cupped his face. Her hand was warm - burning. It scorched him and he squeezed his eyes shut, wanted to pull away from her. Instead he reached up and covered her hand with his, held her to him. Held that fire to his skin. "Daryl... You can't. You never could. I don't want you to."

" _Beth._ "

Barely audible. He had no strength left to put behind the name. He didn't need to tell her, he knew, that he would follow her. That he couldn't leave her. Even if he wanted to, and he couldn't imagine not wanting to be with her with every part of himself, every scattered and broken piece. She found him in the dark. Brought him out of it. Now he would never be able to run.

He would never be able to hide himself from her.

"You can't," she repeated. Her hand slipped up his cheek, fingers combing into his hair - both hands now. She tugged his head down, tipped his forehead against hers. "Tell me. Are you scared?"

He trembled. They were all bathed in that bloody light. Stained by it.

"Yeah."

"Me too."

She kissed him.

It started soft, light. It didn't stay that way. She pulled him down, pulled him against her, her hands tightening in his hair at the same time as his hands found her waist. That burning, that fire... He pressed closer to it. Was hungry for it. It was better to be in this darkness now, mouth arching against hers, folding her into his arms with all that desperation and all that need. Tasting her, something like blood on her lips and tongue, though there was no reason for it to be there. He slid his hands up her back and he thought of roses, a field of them, lying down in them with her and letting the thorns tear them both apart.

Nothing between them anymore. Falling into her, through her, and together making the door. The key their joined hands.

This was a trap, and in the end he was happy to be caught. And he would watch her destroyed, and he would follow her into that hell, and he knew at the last that he would be content.

With her, still, he could be happy.

The bow fell to the ground and the grass reached up to welcome them.

~

And should we look away now, and leave them to themselves? I think no, and I think they would agree. I would have you see them, aye, see them very well, for this is love, a clear, fresh spring in a desert too long dry. I would have you see them find each other, find how their bodies fit together and how they can move in a rhythm at once clumsy with its newness and so utterly perfect. I would have you see their bodies red in the moonlight, the fall of her hair and his fingers combing through it, tangled in it as he pushes her gently down and she rises to meet him.

I would have you hear them: the whispers and moans and sighs, soft laughter, and - yes - even the tears, because when one is full up with love it cannot be contained, and it spills over and falls like rain. I would have you hear him say her name and her answer with his, and I would have you understand that it was like a song, like her singing and him joining her, low and sweet.

I would have you understand that it was not all softness, because he wanted her like he had never wanted anyone else, and after they slept a while he woke her and took her a second time and it was almost like pain. I would have you understand that even then he was desperate, and even a little angry, not with her but because he had been denied this and he had never known how good it could be. And I would have you know that she was the one who pushed him down that time, and that in the end he gave beneath her, fell back before her, and when he let her rule him he did so with perfect gladness.

I would have you know that he loved her and she loved him. I would have you be sure of that. I would have you be very sure.

I would have you know that they love each other still.


End file.
